CDNLAO Newsletter
No. 66, November 2009
The National Diet Library (NDL) has been conducting the Web Archiving Project (WARP) since 2002. In WARP, the NDL collects, archives and provides (including provision via the Internet) websites based on permission from each webmaster, and it targets websites and online periodicals of national government agencies and institutions, public-interest corporations and organizations, local governments (prefectures; ordinance-designated cities; cities, towns and villages to be consolidated), universities, and international and cultural events.
Since fiscal 2008, WARP extended the scope of collection to private universities in Japan, in addition to national and public universities. In step with the increasing shift of the form of periodicals from paper to electronic media, it focuses on acquiring such periodicals that have switched to electronic versions.
The table below shows the numbers of the collection as of the end of August 2009.
| TYPE | Number of titles | Number of items | Number of files | Volume of data(GB) |
| Online periodicals (total) | 1,914 | 11,202 | 7,399,467 | 1,104 |
| Websites (total) | 2,469 | 9,651 | 145,311,602 | 13,092 |
| National agencies | 55 | 569 | 26,267,772 | 2,919 |
| Prefectures | 38 | 217 | 26,229,500 | 2,279 |
| Government ordinance cities | 15 | 88 | 10,859,317 | 953 |
| Cities, towns, and villages to be consolidated | 1,740 | 6,337 | 19,781,928 | 1,407 |
| Public-interest corporations/organizations | 179 | 1,255 | 33,554,861 | 2,035 |
| Universities | 345 | 907 | 28,046,500 | 3,472 |
| Events | 97 | 278 | 571,724 | 27 |
| Total | 4,383 | 20,853 | 152,711,069 | 14,196 |
In July 2009, the National Diet Library Law was amended to enable the NDL to collect part of Japanese Internet resources under law. The purpose of the amendment is to use such resources for assisting the legislative activities of the National Diet (to provide them for official use), and it aims to collect Internet resources offered by public institutions including national government agencies and institutions and local governments. The targets include open resources which we have difficulty in harvesting with web-crawler software, and it stipulates the obligation of each webmaster to send the resources to us. (This does not apply to items provided for a long term and regarded as unlikely to be deleted.)
While acquired Internet resources are offered for viewing in the NDL facilities, provision via the Internet is available only if we receive permission from webmasters or other copyright holders.
Though the archiving of Internet resources produced by private institutions is not covered by this revision and remains as a future task, the revision furthers the institutionalization of Internet archiving, which we have aimed at since 2004. When it comes into effect in April 2010, the NDL intends to enhance the Internet archiving of Japan.
Copyright (C) 2009 National Diet Library
