1. Introduction

In this paper, I will describe the current state of provision of bibliographic information on the NDL-OPAC and, as one of the new trends, the relation between bibliographic information and a digital archive portal that has been developed under the "National Diet Library Digital Library Medium Term Plan for 2004."
 

2. Provision of bibliographic information

In October 2002, timed with the opening of the Kansai-kan of the NDL, we started to offer the present NDL-OPAC to the public and have significantly extended its coverage of bibliographic information, including 6.5 million bibliographic data in the Japanese Periodicals Index.

(Please refer to attached document 1 (PDF, 83KB) for bibliographic data available on the NDL-OPAC.) 

Through the NDL-OPAC, users are to view bibliographic information and holding information of materials as well as to request remote copying services. These functions enable users to order photocopies of, for example, articles listed on the Japanese Periodicals Index without visiting the NDL in person.

In addition, we formulated the “Plan for Retrospective Conversion 2002�Ein 2002 and have promoted a retrospective conversion project with the purpose of encouraging the wideer use of the library’s collections. As of March 2006, the total bibliographic data searchable in the NDL-OPAC is 14.9 million.

(Please refer to attached document 2 (PDF, 65KB) for changes in the total data of the NDL-OPAC.)
 

3. Electronic library projects and the digital archive portal

As for the digitization project to provide primary information, the "Rare Books Image Database" (Japanese only) was launched in 2000, followed by the "Digital Library from the Meiji Era" (Japanese only) in 2002, on which users are able to search bibliographic data and table of contents of the books published in the Meiji era and view full-text digital images of them. 

(Please refer to attached document 3 (PDF, 45KB) for the contents provided on our website as the electronic library collection)

We announced the "National Diet Library Digital Library Medium Term Plan for 2004" in 2004 as the next action plan. On the basis of the plan, the NDL has been working for creation of a digital archive portal as a navigation tool that gives integral access to digital archives inside and outside the NDL, in addition to promoting construction of digital archives.

3.2. Digital archive portal and bibliographic information
The digital archive portal aims to enable users to search and access primary information they want, to the utmost extent, out of search results by entering keywords in one search box without being aware of the presence of other digital archives.

Each NDL electronic library content has been sequentially included in the digital archive portal since 2005. All bibliographic data of the Japanese books and periodicals recorded in the NDL-OPAC and one-year data from the Japanese Periodicals Index were added to the portal, and it has become possible to display search results of the NDL-OPAC on the portal.

In July this year we enhanced the capability of the digital archive portal to give access to primary information by adding the function of linking each search result of bibliographic information of Japanese books to the corresponding material in the "Digital Library from the Meiji Era."

Furthermore, users can search archives other than the NDL's by various techniques including across-resource search and harvesting of metadata.

(Please refer to attached document 4 (PDF, 136KB) for the contents of the digital archive portal)

In an age when people are relying more on digital information than on paper-form materials as a way of obtaining information, it can be said that the digital archive portal is an attempt to explore information resources in Japan. In this regard, however, the present portal is no more than a prototype whose main goal is to examine necessary techniques such as across-resource search. The issue is how to extend cooperative relationships with other institutions for a full-fledged operation system in future.

With regard to bibliographic information, we are facing issues including how to create bibliographic data (metadata) of networked information resources. The digital library division and the bibliographic division of the NDL have cooperatively carried out examinations on metadata standards.