The "BOJ" provides bibliographic information of books on Japan in Western languages processed by the NDL in and after 2002. It is updated on a quarterly basis, issued in January, April, July, and October. The data appearing during a year will be accumulated and combined the next year.

As we informed you in the NDL Newsletter No.123, the "BOJ" has discontinued publication in book form, with the final issue, January - December 2001. The first issue of the "BOJ" on the web, released in January 2003, will provide the bibliographic information of books on Japan in Western languages processed by the NDL during the period January ・December 2002 after the termination of publication in book form. In April 2003, the data of January/March 2003 will be provided, and after then, updated on a quarterly basis.

The "BOJ" includes bibliographic information of books on Japan in Western languages published in and out of Japan and acquired through deposit, purchase, donation and exchange. There is no limit on the countries or regions where the books were published, but materials in other than Western languages, such as Chinese or Korean, are not included, nor are materials published for children.

The data in the "BOJ" are extracted automatically from the database of books in Western languages processed by the NDL, by about 700 classification codes relating to Japan, conforming to the "National Diet Library Classification, Revised Edition (1987)". Abstracted data are classified into one of the following categories: Politics/Law/Administration, Economics/Industries, Social affairs/Labor, Education, History/Geography, Philosophy/Religion, Arts/Language/Literature, Science and technology, Learning in general/Journalism/Libraries/Bibliographies Special collections, Old and rare books, and Special materials.

We hope the "BOJ" on the web will be useful for all the people who have interest in Japan, including overseas researchers and Japanese studies institutions.