At the request of the NNL for cooperation in its preservation programs, the IFLA/PAC Regional Centre for Asia (hereinafter referred to as the Centre) made the following two-year plan in FY2003:

The NNL's request for training was submitted to JICA through Ms. Nobue Yamada, a Senior Volunteer dispatched to Nepal by JICA. In response to the request, JICA decided to accept Mr. Pradeep Bhattarai of the NNL as a trainee in preservation and library administration.
 

The NNL wished Mr. Bhattarai to learn preservation work and library management as a whole including the roles and functions of a national library, the legal deposit system, compilation of the national bibliography, library services for children, and support for public libraries. Taking the NNL's requests and the result of Mr. Murayama's inspection into consideration, the Centre made a program and schedule, which were approved by both inside the NDL and other institutions that would be involved in this program. The training is scheduled from October 14 to December 2 (2004).

The main focus of the curriculum is cultivating the staff to play a key role in managing preservation work at the NNL. It includes courses on the concepts and techniques of basic preventive preservation, matching the NNL's preservation needs, and how to make preservation and conservation policies, from all of which we expect that the trainee will become capable of making preservation plans on his own. The NDL gains cooperation from other institutions in some fields. 

Courses to be provided in the NDL: 

• Basics of preservation
• Causes of deterioration and its prevention
• Materials and forms of books
• Supervising binding and restoration work
• Disaster prevention for library materials
• NDL Preservation Plan
• Preservation planning for the NNL, etc.

• Preservation and user services of rare books and documents 
• Making of traditional Japanese paper, etc.

Based on the Preservation Cooperation Program, the Centre has cooperated with national libraries in Asia by accepting trainees and researchers and by sending out lecturers. The Centre has hosted such training programs 12 times in total, accepting 25 trainees from 7 countries and 1 region (Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Britain, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Korean Republic, and Taiwan) since 1990. Also, 14 lecturers were dispatched from the NDL in total to 11 countries (Indonesia, Britain, Mongolia, Egypt, Myanmar, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Korean Republic, and Nepal) since 1991. In order to meet further demands and expectation, the Centre will make efforts to know the needs for preservation and to cope with them and establish better communication with Asian countries. 

To make this training program for Nepal possible, JICA and the NDL collaborated for the first time, in making the program and curriculum, selecting institutions for the training outside of NDL, etc. From this collaboration, JICA expanded its field of cooperation and the NDL gained budget for the cooperation project. This, I hope, will make international cooperation more extensive and practical.

The Centre will continue to cooperate with such international cooperative organizations to enhance preservation cooperation activities in Asia, a vast and culturally-diverse region.
 

Brief Report of the Training Program Mr. Pradeep Bhattarai It is three weeks since the training program for Mr. Pradeep Bhattarai began on October 18 at the NDL. First of all, he studied the general preservation course at the Tokyo Main Library. And then far away from Tokyo, he participated in the 90th All Japan Library Conference 2004 held in Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture, from October 27 to 28, and visited the Shiga Prefectural Library and public libraries in the Prefecture, the Library of Tenri University and the Kyoto National Museum and the Kansai-kan of the NDL, where he also got training in almost all its sections.  He came back to Tokyo on November 5. From November 8 he has continued again to study some preservation courses, such as the microfilming and digitalization of library materials, at two institutions belonging to the Japan Image and Information Management Association, and finally will summarize what so far he will have learned so as to be able to assess the preservation needs of the NNL and formulate its preservation plan for the future. He will also study user services as well as technical services on site with the flow of materials in the NDL, which may be of use for managing his Library. He will also visit the International Library of Children's Literature of the NDL, Tokyo Metropolitan Library, the National Archives of Japan, and the Japan Library Association. Just after completing the planned program, he will be back home on December 2.  (as of November 8, 2004) Meeting between Mr. Bhattarai and NDL staff of the Preservation Division