From left: Ms. Sakaguchi, Dr. Lowry, Dr. Nagao (Librarian of the NDL), Mr. Ikuhara (Deputy Librarian) and Mr. Okada (Director General of the Reference and Special Collections Department)

On August 3, 2007, Dr. Charles B. Lowry (Dean of Libraries and Professor, University of Maryland, USA) and Ms. Eiko Sakaguchi (Curator, East Asia Collection & Gordon W. Prange Collection, McKeldin Library, University of Maryland) were invited to the NDL to give lectures for the NDL staff members.  The Libraries of University of Maryland have been taking a forward-looking approach to library services utilizing information technology, and have been building up close cooperation with other academic libraries across the USA. The University of Maryland and the NDL have been carrying out joint projects to microfilm the Gordon W. Prange Collection (a comprehensive collection of publications issued in Japan during the early period of the Allied Occupation and submitted to the GHQ/SCAP for censorship, and ownership of which was transferred to the University of Maryland after GHQ/SCAP finished censorship).

Dr. Lowry gave a lecture titled “The Ubiquity of Libraries: Some Comments on the Present and Future.” Giving us a term representing the direction in which libraries are heading – “ubiquitous library” - he explored how the work of libraries will change in the future.

First he suggested using the word “ubiquitous,” rather than virtual/digital/electronic, to signify more practically what libraries are becoming; while libraries are much more dependent on computing and providing online materials, libraries “as place” do not seem to be disappearing. He explained why libraries will remain available both in a physical way and over the Internet with some experiences and statistics from the University of Maryland.

Then specific characteristics of the “ubiquitous library” were introduced as follows:

• An increasing preponderance of scholarly information will be accessible online in full text.
• The role of librarians will continue to change dramatically as they engage in classroom teaching, collaborative research, etc.
• Libraries will enter into shared-use facilities and will create consortia maintaining “last copy” access.
• Digital library programs will become a vital offering of unique special collections, and will have the added benefit of high impact on the broader educational community. The digitizing and microfilming project of the children’s books in the Prange Collection between the University of Maryland Libraries and the NDL is a good example of this.

He added two more characteristics with some concrete examples. One is that library computing applications, particularly gateways enabled by URL resolvers, make it possible for users to gain access to the diverse resources on the Internet in a highly integrated and ordered form. He said the issue is “how they should gain access,” and the answer to this question lies in a Google search which has a massive index of resources harvested from the Internet and provides simpler, easier, faster and better search than that of libraries. An excellent example of the activities to give library systems a resemblance to Google is the currently developing “WorldCat Local application OCLC” between the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and a group of West Coast US Libraries led by the University of Washington. It has realized interoperation between the data and functions of WorldCat.org and the systems of local libraries, which enables users to have seamless access to huge quantities of information in the WorldCat database like surfing on the Internet. At the same time, they find the information reliable and trusted.

The second characteristic is networked reference service. Dr. Lowry traced the development of reference service at University of Maryland: email reference in the mid-1990s; the HumanClick/LivePerson chat application; a new chat technology integrating chat and e-mail offered by OCLC, called Questionpoint; and MarylandAskUsNow which “a cooperative chat reference involving many libraries across the state and ‘around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating QuestionPoint libraries’” across the US. At the end he remarked that the next wave of chat type service will be to use Instant Messaging.

After pointing out these characteristics of the ubiquitous library, Dr. Lowry concluded his lecture by stressing the importance of the term “ubiquitous” to frame our thinking about how to move into the future to share visions and move forward.

Ms. Eiko Sakaguchi showed us a video of the overview of the Prange Collection. The collection consists of 18,047 newspaper titles, 13,799 magazine titles, 71,000 book and pamphlet titles, 640 maps and more. With a wealth of pictures, she picked up some materials from the collection and presented interesting aspects of them, for example, by comparing a censored item with its original copy. She also mentioned the longstanding cooperation between the University of Maryland and the NDL such as the detachment of NDL staff members to the library to organize and sort out the collection from 1995 to 2002. Her presentation gave us a renewed recognition of the deep historical relationship between the US and Japan and the value and the appeal of such historical materials.

Iojima ni ikiru : sento no shinso to Washinton e no furyo tentenki by Shuji Ishii. Chuosha
(Left) pre-censored galley proof
(Right) censored version

(Left) Kanzennaru fufu by Takada, Giichiro. Kobarutosha
(Right) Tsuma no seirigaku by Takemura, Bunsho. Kobarutosha
Both books are designed by Togo, Seiji

Shiberiya yokuryu ikkanenhan: furyo no shuki
by Wagi, Enjo. Shubunsha
An example of post censorship

All of them are held by the Gordon W. Prange Collection, McKeldin Library.

At the end, there were questions from the NDL staff relating to both lectures, such as on libraries dealing with multimedia, improvement of reference services through chatting reference and coordination with Google. Their lectures were highly informative and full of practical ideas to enhance our library services.

Related articles in the NDL Newsletter: 
Bibliographic data of newspapers in the Gordon W. PrangeCollection added to National Union Catalog of Newspapers (No. 147, February 2006)
The NDL set out to collect books of the Gordon W. Prange Collection (No. 143, June 2005)
Microform materials of the Prange Collection (No. 130, April 2003)

Related NDL sites:
The Gordon W. Prange Collection (introduction of collections of the Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room, Tokyo Main Library; Japanese only)
Lecture by Dr. Lowry at the International Library of Children’s Literature (February 1, 2003) “THE GORDON W. PRANGE COLLECTION”

up