I wish you a Happy New Year.

We have experienced a year full of turbulence and uncertainty, the foremost of which was the Great East Japan Earthquake. This year, we must work together to fight against adversity and move forward in a spirit of hope.

The National Diet Library (NDL) has worked hard to mitigate the impact of the disaster: we dispatched staff six times to tsunami-struck areas to train local librarians in how to clean up soiled materials. A restoration specialist dispatched by the Library of Congress was also sent to Sendai to directly instruct local staff in technical details.

The Research and Legislative Reference Bureau has also established a special research team to accurately answer earthquake-related inquiries from the Diet members and has also compiled various reports related to the earthquake. This year too, we intend to publish reports useful for the reconstruction.

Facing major catastrophe, one of our vital missions should be to collect all sorts of records concerning the great earthquake and construct a database to benefit reconstruction efforts, research, education, and also to pass down the nation's memory to coming centuries. For that purpose, since last May, we have been stressing to government ministries the importance of building a digital archive of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Our efforts bore fruit when they each agreed on collecting earthquake-related records in the areas under their own jurisdiction and building a database; the role of the NDL is to establish and administer a portal to cross-search and retrieve necessary records from those databases. The project will take years to complete, but we will persevere.

We face another challenge. The system we have been using to manage library operation and search is nearly a decade old, and its concept itself has become dated. Thus, from the beginning of this year, it has been completely replaced. With the introduction of more user-friendly functions, I am sure you will be pleased with our renewed services.

The large-scale digitization launched in 2009 was duly completed last March with approximately 2.1 million volumes digitized in total. The breakdown is: almost all the books published up to 1968, 12 thousand titles of journals from the first issue to 2000, 70 thousand items of classics and others. They make one fifth of the materials due to be digitized. All the digitized materials can be read inside the NDL facilities and we intend to progressively make out-of-copyright materials viewable on the Internet.

Last October, we merged the Public Services Department and the Reference and Special Collections Department to form the Reader Services and Collections Department to offer better service to our patrons. We also newly established the Digital Information Department in step with the increasingly vital role information system plays in the operation of the library; it will play a pivotal role in our efforts to construct an advanced digital library and to develop the "national knowledge infrastructure" which will include the Digital Archive of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

So, with our newly-installed library system and organizational restructuring, the National Diet Library makes a fresh start this year. We pledge to improve our services to both the Diet and the public, and will fulfill our mission with renewed resolve.

Makoto Nagao, Librarian, National Diet Library