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No. 74, July 2012

For the National Diet Library (NDL), serving researchers and supporting the academic profession constitute important aspects of its service. It has been keeping a framework of close working relationship as befits the specialized nature of university libraries (ULs).

The uppermost echelon of the relationship is the Round Table Conference between the Librarian of the National Diet and the Directors of University Libraries (Conference). The first meeting took place in 1960 to exchange opinions with library directors of universities in the Tokyo area with 88 attendees. By 1979, the Conference was held several times a year; most of them took place in the NDL, though some of them were in various provinces.

The Conference usually consists of a report of the recent development at the NDL followed by discussion on the subjects for which the NDL and ULs can work together. By skimming through the themes of past discussions, we can glimpse the transition of major agenda of the age.

Earlier discussion dealt with the compilation of the Union catalog of foreign books acquired by 53 libraries in Japan 1984-1987 for which ULs made vital contributions. In 1971, the main theme was printed card catalog and promotion of depositing university publications. From 1978 to 1981, JAPAN/MARC was the principal theme. Meanwhile, computerization and networking of library management were in steady advance and aligning of such networks and the NDL was actively discussed.

The construction of the Annex Building and consequent change of library service was an often-discussed topic during 1986-1987. Especially, abolition of entrance privileges for university students and removal of some materials from the Japanese National Bibliography (as a result of categorizing materials with the same title with irregular publication frequency as serials) caused same opposition. They also discussed the setting of closing day under the newly introduced 5-day work week and accelerating the photoduplication service by mail.

The establishment of the National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS, henceforth) was an important watershed for the NDL-ULs relationship. Thanks to the information infrastructure it provided, such as a database for locating materials across ULs and a mutual loan system, the ULs' expectation of the NDL became more all-inclusive rather than direct service oriented. Thus, from 1989 onward, the Conference has been conducted under the pre-set comprehensive theme.

By 1993-1994, due to the swelling number of universities, the Conference needed to invite some 200 UL directors. Reaching any meaningful conclusion became increasingly difficult, and regional imbalance caused by over-concentration of invitees in the Kanto region was also a serious issue. In 1995, the Conference was suspended and the NDL and representatives of the ULs in the form of the executive board of the Japanese Coordinating Committee for University Libraries (JCCUL) consulted on a new form of the Conference.

The Conference was resumed on October 28, 1996 with the directors and chief administrative officers of JCCUL's committee members (13 libraries as of March 2012). Since then, the streamlined form of the Conference has been held once a year.

In 2006, the NDL and the JCCUL established the Liaison Committee of the NDL and ULs (Liaison Committee) as a subordinate body of the Conference. The Liaison Committee is intended to discuss and coordinate the matters of mutual interest and cooperation on more practical level and members consist of front line managers on both sides. Held 2-4 times a year, it discussed such topics as interlibrary loan and photoduplication service, preservation of journals including archiving of foreign digital journals, and most importantly, the digitization of doctoral dissertations.

This last issue emerged as a field of major cooperation thanks to 12.7bn yen supplementary budget allocated to the digitization program of the NDL in FY2009. It allowed the NDL to digitize around 140 thousand items of dissertations deposited between 1991 and 2000. In order to make them available on the internet and allow the university libraries to make use of the data on their own, the NDL and ULs needed to coordinate the copyright-clearance effort. Thus, the Liaison Committee established a Working Group on the Issues Related to the Digitization of Doctoral Dissertations (WG) as a consultative body to discuss the matter and report back to it. On November 21, 2011, the WG submitted the Analytical Report on the Copyright Clearance of Digitized Doctoral Dissertations to the Liaison Committee which was in turn submitted to the JCCUL on December 8.