This is an abridged translation of the series of articles
"Excerpts from the Annual Report of the NDL, FY 2006: statistics (2)"
in the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 559 (October 2007).

The NDL extends its services to the executive and judicial branches of Japan chiefly through its branch libraries established within the government ministries and agencies and the Supreme Court. There are 26 branch libraries and 6 sub-branches as of October 2007.

<Table 1>Branch Library services

Note: "-" are uncounted items.

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Services for the general public are offered in the Tokyo Main Library, Kansai-kan, International Library of Children’s Literature (ILCL) and Toyo Bunko. These facilities offer services for both remote and on-site users.

The Tokyo Main Library and the Kansai-kan have introduced a user registration system to improve the convenience of both remote and on-site services. Once registered, a person can enter the library with a simplified procedure and may also request copying service via the Internet. There were 5,377 registered libraries (496 newly applied) and 84,155 individuals (31,376) as of FY2006.

1. Services for remote users

a. Interlibrary loan

The Tokyo Main Library and the Kansai-kan lent out 16,677 items of materials to 3,478 institutions and libraries including 95 new member institutions and libraries in FY2006. They can make a request for individual users via the NDL-OPAC in addition to postal mail, fax and through the National Diet Library Interlibrary Loan (NDL-ILL)* system. The number of requests via the NDL-OPAC was 12,518 (71 % of all the requests) in FY2006.

The ILCL lent out 238 items of materials to public libraries, and from November 2002, a Book Sets Lending Service for school libraries was started and 8,734 materials were lent out in FY2006.

<Chart 1> Number of interlibrary loans (by form of request)

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b. Copying service for remote users

We received requests for 305,904 articles for copying service in FY2006 from remote users (283,357 in the previous FY). This includes the number of items requested at ILCL (1,092). We receive requests via the NDL-OPAC as well as postal mail, fax, and the NDL-ILL. The number of requests via the NDL-OPAC comprised 83% of all the requests in FY2006 (76% in the previous FY), and of them requests from individuals make up 67 %.

<Chart 2> Number of articles requested for copying service from remote users

(From FY2002 to FY2004, the number shows the transaction, while later than FY2005 shows the requests received.)

*Request of loan and copying service via the NDL-ILL was discontinued at the end of FY2006.

c. Reference services

Remote reference services are available by phone, letter, fax or e-mail. In FY2006, there were 6,332 written (letter, fax, or e-mail) requests from domestic libraries.

Reference service by e-mail is also available to registered libraries in Japan and overseas users. In FY2006, 61% of the requests from registered libraries in Japan were made by e-mail.

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2. On-site services

a. Numbers of opening days, visitors and circulation

The following table introduces opening days, numbers of visitors and circulation at the 3 facilities in FY2006.

<Table 2> Number of opening days, visitors and circulation

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b. Copying service

The amount of copying counted by requests was 800,399 at the Tokyo Main Library (731,420 in the previous FY), 66,484 at the Kansai-kan (63,176) and 6,720 at the ILCL (8,562). In FY2006, services including the following were expanded: copying fee reduced; new copying menu added; color copying service of microfilms started in the ILCL. In the Tokyo Main Library the page limit has been eased for same-day photoduplication service, and as a result the number of requests for this service increased by 10%.

The number of copying includes printout of microforms and electronic materials in addition to paper form. The number of requests for printout has been increasing year by year, and was 13,812 in FY2006 (12,976 in the previous FY). Especially in FY2006, new digital information provision services were introduced, and materials available for copying and service menus were expanded. Request for copying was made available via terminals instead of the former paper application form. As a consequence of these changes, user-friendliness of digital information copying has been improved. In addition, the Tokyo Main Library and the Kansai-kan provide on-site remote photoduplication service, for interlibrary use of materials.

<Chart 5 > Number of copying (print out)

c. Reference service

The number of reference replies for visitors was 487,686 at the Tokyo Main Library (467,511 in the previous FY), 53,012 at the Kansai-kan (52,154) and 6,582 at the ILCL (7,366).

d. Characteristics of each facility

Tokyo Main Library:

Tokyo Main Library improved environment to make it possible to provide on-site users offline electronic publications (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM etc.), online journals, online digital information (online databases etc.) and Internet information, and introduced new digital information provision services in October 2006. With these improvements, reading and request of online journals and some offline electronic publications have become available from ten special materials rooms. As for copying, improvements have been made as mentioned above.

Kansai-kan:

The Kansai-kan, which holds 80,000 materials on the open shelves in the General Collections Room, changed the layout for more efficient use of the vast amount of materials.

International Library of Children’s Literature (ILCL):

In October 2006, ILCL started providing color microfilm use of about 300 volumes of children’s literature, a part of the productions of the first phase of the cooperative microfilming project of the Prange Collection.

For the past statistics, please see here.

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