General Questions about Searching Catalogs
Q: What can I search by the NDL-OPAC ?
A: You can search for the materials held by the NDL, including books, periodicals and newspapers published inside and outside Japan, electronic resources, rare books and old materials, doctoral dissertations, maps, audio-visual materials, standards and technical reports. The Japanese Periodicals Index can also be searched via the NDL-OPAC. For details, please refer to "NDL-OPAC user guide " and "User guide" at the NDL-OPAC . For information about bibliographic databases other than the NDL-OPAC, refer to questions 2 to 5 below. For non- bibliographic databases, visit the "List of Online Services ".
Q: How can I find books for the blind held by the NDL ?
A: There are two different databases. To search for Braille and large-print books acquired via the legal deposit system, use the NDL-OPAC . To look for recorded academic literature produced by the NDL, use the "National Union Catalog of Braille and Recorded Books in Japan" (Japanese only). For further information, see "Library services for the blind" (Japanese only).
Q: How can I search the catalogs of other libraries ?
A: The following union catalog databases allow cross searching for catalogs of libraries in Japan:
- Union Catalog Network System (Japanese only)
- Newspaper National Catalog (Japanese only)
- National Union Catalog of Braille and Recorded Books in Japan (Japanese only)
- Union Catalog Database of Children's Literature (Japanese only)
For details such as participating libraries and the amount of data available, visit each database's site.
Q: How can I search for information on the Internet ?
A: The Dnavi (Database Navigation System /Japanese only)
navigates you to the top pages of databases on the websites operating mostly in Japan. For details, please refer to "Help " (Japanese only).
Web Archiving Project (Japanese only) , which harvests information resources on the Internet, offers a search tool for past web information. For details, please refer to "Help " (Japanese only).
Q: How many days after publication is a book ready for reader services?
A: We cannot tell exactly how many days after publication a book is ready because the period from publication to acquisition varies. Once acquired by the library, most Japanese publications submitted under the legal deposit system become available to readers within 70 days.
