National Diet Library Newsletter
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No. 128, December 2002 |
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New bibliographic
services:
Japanese National Bibliography,
OPAC
and bibliographic control (part
one of two)
by Kimiko Harada
Director General, Bibliography
Department
This is a translation of the article of the same title in the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 499
| Contents
Catalogs and bibliographies provide readers with a guide into library materials. Over the past twenty years, bibliographic services have experienced developments in communication technologies such as computerization followed by the Internet. Including the national bibliography and the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog), the National Diet Library (NDL) is offering new services one after another in FY 2002* . In order to enhance our services by providing bibliographic information widely and appropriately, keeping up with the continuing progress of the IT environment is an important task for us. *
J-BISC (DVD version) was newly released!. Please see here.
In the major reorganization of the NDL in April 2002, the Bibliography
Department was established, integrating the cataloging sections which had
previously been in four separate departments. New functions of the Bibliography
Department are: (1) Bibliographic data creation (2) Compiling and providing
catalogs and (3) Bibliographic control. We aim at strengthening all three
functions by concentrating the relevant divisions into one department.
Now that the Kansai-kan of the NDL has started its services, I take the opportunity to report here on the current state and new services in FY 2002 of the national bibliography, the OPAC and the bibliographic control for which the Bibliography Department is responsible. * In this report, "Bibliographic data" and "Bibliographic information"
mean information on each individual item, "Catalog" and "Bibliography"
mean collected and arranged bibliographic data. In terms of library services,
compiling and providing catalogs and bibliographic control are collectively
called "Bibliographic services"
The acquisition of domestic publications under the legal deposit system and compiling catalogs are the principal missions of the NDL. As is generally known, our services are based on acquisition, recording, storage and provision of domestic publications. The national bibliography is an exhaustive record of domestic publications acquired under the legal deposit system. At present, the NDL publishes the Japanese National Bibliography Weekly List and JAPAN/MARC (magnetic tape) forms of the national bibliography. We have to reconsider how they should be compiled and provided in the network age.
The framework for national libraries' task of acquiring domestic publications under the legal deposit system and publishing national bibliographies was formed after many years and has been supported mainly by national libraries. Developments in electrotechnology have led to various types of publications being brought out in recent years. The publishing environment has changed significantly from printed materials to diversification and coexistence of media, then to diversification of publication formats. Coping with these changes is an issue common to national libraries. The subject is animatedly discussed and reported in the annual conference of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). We reaffirm the role of national libraries and are trying to find a new way in cooperation with publishers and related institutions. Varied media increase the types of publications included in the national
bibliographies. National bibliographies themselves started to be published
and distributed in some different formats. In 1998, the Second International
Conference on National Bibliographic Services was held after an interval
of twenty years to consider the form to be taken by national bibliographies
in the network age. Delegates from eighty countries including Japan took
part in the conference and issued recommendations on the coverage, provision,
swift compiling, and standardization of the national bibliographies.
Improvements in the Japanese National Bibliography The number of entries in the Japanese National Bibliography was at the 70,000 level in the early 1990s and hit 100,000 in 1999. Digital publications, publications for the visually handicapped, and audiovisual materials have been newly added to monographs, serials and newspapers. On the NDL website, distribution of the Japanese National Bibliography (web version, Japanese only) has started in April 2002. The printed version of the Japanese National Bibliography will continue publication in FY 2002, and then a decision will be made on when to cease. We make every effort to reduce the interval between the receipt of deposited
materials and their appearance in the Japanese National Bibliography. The
process, which has been adapted to the web version, has already shortened
it by three weeks. Proceeding with accurate data creation as the national
bibliography at the same time, we are aiming at reducing the interval to
an average of five weeks from the two or three months it takes at present.
We aim to reach this target within FY 2003.
As the magnetic tape version of the national bibliography, JAPAN/MARC has been provided for over twenty years since 1981. The institutions that use the JAPAN/MARC can process or devise the data to fit the purposes of their information systems. The following are being improved in FY 2002.
The vast amount of information on the net is unfixed and vanishes quickly. The collection, accumulation and bibliographic data creation of such online digital publications are totally new challenges for us. Discussions and experiments on them are going on inside and outside Japan. The Legal Deposit System Council, which is the advisory council for the Librarian of the NDL, is discussing " Covering online digital publications by the legal deposit system and in case they are not covered by the system, what and how to collect them." As for accumulating, the NDL Web Archiving Project (WARP)(Japanese only) started working as one of the digital library experimental projects. Metadata (data about data) for online digital publications corresponds to the bibliographic data for monograph and other publications. Metadata is a concept that can be applied not only to online digital publications but also to general catalogs. Online digital publications, on the other hand, differ so much from publications in paper or other fixed media in respect of publishing to accumulating that we need to take further steps to deal with them. In conformity with the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, "The NDL Metadata Element Set" was issued as the NDL standard for metadata creation in March 2001. Prior to the developments in the legal deposit system, the WARP experimentally adopts the standard and assigns metadata to collected websites and online periodicals. The metadata can be used for retrieval. In Japan and abroad, the rapid increase of online digital publications
activates discussions about the application and standardization of metadata.
"The conference on bibliographic control" which will be reported in the
next issue, takes metadata for the theme in FY 2002 to assess the current
state in Japan and investigate the future action.
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