The primary mission of the National Diet Library (NDL), as the only national deposit library, is to collect and preserve the nation's cultural heritage for the generations to come. Digital publishing has been becoming a big industry in Japan, and digital publications are now becoming a part of Japanese culture. The NDL has recognized that it is very important to collect and preserve digital publications as well as those in print for the future use. Thus the discussion started in the Legal Deposit System Research Council on whether and how digital publications should be included in the legal deposit system. The Council's final report to the NDL includes recommendations that the NDL should collect physical format digital publications (such as CD-ROMs and DVDs) by legal deposit and online digital publications by selective acquisition activities. Accordingly the NDL has been working on the implementation of the Council's recommendations, aiming to have the related clauses of the National Diet Library Law amended in FY2000.

In the meantime, the NDL began to work on preservation of digital publications by setting up the Digital Preservation Working Group under the Digital Library Promotion Committee in 1998. The Working Group's responsibilities were to survey the present situation with regard to preservation of digital publications already acquired and stored in the NDL and to make recommendations to the Committee for the future improvement. The survey was conducted by sending a questionnaire to each section which maintains digital collections. The result shows that the NDL had collected approximately 130,000 music CDs, 15,000 Laser Disks, and 7,000 CD-ROMs as of 1998. Music CDs and a part of the CD-ROM collection are for public use while the rest are only stored in closed iron cabinets in the same stacks as printed publications. The NDL has not yet collected online publications as of 1999. It has, however, thousands of titles of its collections in the Digital Library Project, including rare books and children's books published prior to 1955. Digitized collections are captured in PhotoCD or CDR and stored on the library's server in various formats. A part of the digitized collections is provided on the Internet for registered monitors on an experimental basis. Through the Pilot Project, the NDL has acquired an expertise in digitizing library collections. The issue of long-term preservation of digital publications, however, has not yet been closely examined, and the best practice not yet established.

Through the survey, the Working Group found that the NDL needs to establish a preservation policy and guidelines for digital preservation. The Working Group also recommended to the Committee that the NDL should exchange information and establish cooperative relationships with other libraries and institutions regarding digital preservation. Because digital preservation, as it was found in the survey, is a very complicated process in terms of technological and legal points of view, it is very important to share experiences and develop cooperative activities with others who are also tackling the same issue so that we can make the most of our limited resources.

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