National Diet Library

1. Introduction
In conjunction with the opening of the Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library (NDL) and the renewal of the NDL website, "Digital Library from the Meiji Era", one of the NDL digital library services, was opened to the public (Japanese only).  The contents can be accessed via "Collection of the Electronic Library" on the top page.  The NDL has a total of about 110,000 titles printed in the Meiji era.  As of September 2003, the contents cover 32,271 titles (50,427 volumes) whose copyrights were confirmed as having expired. 

Digitizing paper materials and releasing them on the Internet is not a novel project, but the Digital Library from the Meiji Era has the largest scale of coverage in Japan.  Almost all the copyright-free items of the Meiji-era collection are already uploaded on the web. We continue clearing copyright issues and plan to release most of the Meiji era collection by the first half of FY 2005. 

Copyright research was done on each title and every author.  It is a large-scale research in proportion to the number of items that will be finally uploaded.  Accordingly, information on the author in each item is compared with existing authority data and when the year of an author's death is not clear, we have to consult at least ten kinds of biographical and other dictionaries. 

In this report, We introduce the planning, implementation and results of the copyright research on which we spent three fiscal years from 2000 to 2002.  In addition, we will mention the clearing of copyright issues including open research performed from the end of FY 2002 to FY 2003.

Put in another way, copyright research on the books printed in the Meiji era is research on the year of the author's death.  During our research, we found no surviving author, but works of some famous people such as Kafu Nagai (novelist 1879-1959) and Yukio Ozaki (politician 1858-1954) are still under copyright even though over ninety years have passed since the last year of the Meiji era (1912). 

When a work is still under copyright, we need to find the contact address of the successor.  Since copyright is transferable, generally bereaved families inherit it.  On the NDL website, open copyright information research was conducted from March to June 2003.  Its purpose was to gather contact information on successors rather than to confirm the year of the author's death. 

By the way, the law states that works can be reproduced in libraries where reproduction is needed for preserving library materials (Article 31).  However, this article does not apply to this project because the purpose of digitization is provision rather than preservation.

                   Chart 1 Workflow of the copyright research 

If the author is identified, we check his/her copyright.  Since the Authority file for Authors of the NDL includes the year of some authors' death for identification, we refer to it at first.  When we do not gain enough information from the database, we go to other checking tools such as biographical dictionaries.  We specify the checking tools in advance and they are used in a predetermined order.  When the year of the author's death is found, the research is finished.  If it is not found after all of the tools have been used, the result is recorded and the research finishes. 

(2) Printouts from microfilm
Printouts from microfilm are used:

• for searching authors not in the statement of responsibility, author heading, notes, or subdivision of the existing bibliographic record 
• for making a table of contents on the web when the work is digitized
• as part of an attachment to apply for compulsory copyright release from the Comisssioner for Cultural Affairs 

The number of filed printouts is about 6,900 volumes in 356 carton boxes.  That shows the size of the collection of 170,000 books printed in the Meiji era.

The subjects of the research are all of the authors involved in a work.  For instance, writers of the preface, the afterword and any calligraphy, the photographer, the illustrator are included in addition to the writer, the editor and the translator.

(4) Finding candidates in the search for the year of the author's death
Authors' names extracted from the printouts are referred to the author list and the bibliography list to confirm the year of the author's death on the lists.  If we gain no information from the lists or the author is not included in the lists, the name becomes a candidate for the search.  If a group author is picked out, we consider that the author's works are copyright free based on Article 53 of the Copyright Law.

(5) Search for the year of the author's death
The year is searched by information tools such as biographical dictionaries.  We specify the information tools in advance.  The search continues until the year is found or all the information tools have been used. Including different editions of the same title, 134 information tools are used in three years.  Apart from bibliographic dictionaries, regional encyclopedias and credible websites such as NACSIS Webcat( National Institute of Informatics-Catalog Information Service), WINE(Waseda University Scholarly Information Network System) and the online catalog of the Library of Congress are used as the tools. 

(6) Organizing the search results
The results are recorded in the author list and the bibliography list. Newly found authors are added to the lists. When we find nothing on a work's copyright, that information is also recorded in the lists.