Opening of Asian Resources Room, Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library, CDNLAO Newsletter 45

No. 45, November 2002

(News from the National Library of Japan)

Opening of Asian Resources Room, Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library

In October 2002, the Asian Resources Room was opened to the public as one of the reading rooms of the Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library. It covers East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The number of staff is 14 including the Director of the Asian Resources Division. It holds 70,000 Asian language books such as Chinese and Korean, and 7,000 titles of periodicals and newspapers, of which 2,400 titles are in process of being acquired. In the Asian Resources Room, 30,000 reference books and basic books including those in Japanese and Western languages, and 1,000 titles of annuals, periodicals and newspapers, are available on open shelves.

The National Diet Library established the Chinese Materials Reading Room when it opened to the public in June 1948. Since then we have consistently had a room devoted to the provision of materials and reference services relating to the Asian region, though the room was reorganized as the Asian and African Materials Room in 1961, and later as the Asian Materials Room in 1986. The Asian Resources Room has now taken over the functions and holdings of the Asian Materials Room that was closed in March 2002, and plays a roll as the NDL center for information services specific to Asia.

Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library

Along with the establishment of the Asian Resources Room, we have developed several projects. One is the National Diet Library Asian Language Materials Online Public Access Catalog (NDL Asian Language Materials OPAC), which provides Internet access to the bibliographic information on Asian language materials held by the NDL, which used to be searchable only by card, and book form catalogs. This OPAC is indispensable as the infrastructure of services and provides search access to 42,000 titles of Chinese books, 3,800 titles of Chinese periodicals and newspapers, 8,300 titles of Korean books and 2,100 titles of Korean periodicals and newspapers. At the present stage, only Chinese and Korean materials held by the Asian Resources Room is searchable, but we plan the gradual retrospective conversion of other Asian language materials held by the Asian Resources Room and Asian materials held by the Tokyo Main Library of the NDL.

Asian Resources Room

At the same time, we participated in the NACSIS-CAT of the National Institute of Informatics, which is an online cataloging system of union catalogs covering the whole country through cooperative data entry (shared cataloging) from participating university libraries. We cooperate with these participating libraries and play an important role in the compilation of union catalogs for Chinese and Korean materials in Japan.

Another project is to develop the website of the Asian Resources Room (http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/service/kansai/asia/asia.html). This website introduces how to use the room, provides a FAQ file and links to Asian resources on the web inside and outside Japan.

In addition, we will launch a new journal within FY 2002, which will take over the "Materials on Asia - accession list and review" published by the former Asian Materials Room. We are also preparing a meeting with Asia-related institutions and a seminar for staff of these institutions.

In a short period of time, the staff of the Asian Resources Room has carried out various preparations such as transfer of library materials from Tokyo to Kansai, re-shelving of these materials in the stacks and reading room, development of the NDL Asian Language Materials OPAC, and reconstruction of the work system. Making use of our website and the new journal, we will make every effort to meet our clients'needs, to enrich our holdings, to enhance the quality of our reference and information services.