The National Diet Library (NDL) invited four library experts from three countries and had opportunities to learn about the situation, projects and activities in each library through lecture meetings and opinion exchange sessions with the NDL staff members. People from outside also attended the lecture meetings. Here are brief reports on the lectures.

From the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), we invited two executives. In the first half of the lecture meeting, Mr. Malotle gave an outline of the library and its activities. The NLSA has three facilities: the Pretoria Campus, Cape Town Campus and Centre for the Book (an organization mainly for promoting children’s reading), and offers services including document supply and reference service, as well as participating in activities such as National Library Week. It plays a leading role among the national libraries in the African region and participates in activities of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), in which it carried out a project for preserving precious manuscripts dated from the 13th century in Mali. Seeking to increase awareness of the library in the country, it succeeded in obtaining a budget for the construction of a new building in the Pretoria Campus.

Then Mr. Ledwaba introduced the digital library projects of the library. The NLSA participates in DISA (Digital Imaging project of South Africa), a joint project to digitize and enable access to materials of South Africa which have a high socio-political value. Another digitization project is that of newspaper clippings and photos by contract with a publisher group in South Africa. One of the largest challenges they are currently facing is the infrastructure of information and communications technology. In the field of human resources, they wish to develop staff’s technological skills through personnel exchanges with us.

Handouts distributed at the lecture
Mr. Malotle (PDF: 858KB)
Mr. Ledwaba (PDF: 426KB)

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We invited Mr. Wiggins from the Library of Congress (LC) of the United States to learn from him about acquisition and bibliographic control at the LC. In his lecture, he first noted that library users expect to have more access to digital contents while the resources for acquisition and bibliographic work at libraries have been becoming scarcer. His lecture gave us an outline of the present condition and future of the technical services operations at the LC as it faces these trends.

Mr. Wiggins introduced the LC’s undertakings and issues to be solved. For example, the LC has been exploring means to take advantage of bibliographic data from external sources, including those shared through the Program for Cooperative Cataloging. He also mentioned an organizational restructure planned for October 2008 to bring acquisitions and cataloging operations into one integrated operation with revised workflows. He also talked about the LC’s response to the final report published in January 2008 by the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, an external advisory group convened by the LC.

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We had the Chief Executive of the National Library Board (NLB), Singapore, Dr. Varaprasad, who talked about the strategy of the NLB, focusing on the “Library 2010” formulated in 2005. He started his lecture with a mention of the present situation where the functions expected of libraries are moving from an information repository to an information gateway in the developing global digital information environment. “Library 2010” aims at redefining the purpose of libraries to offer access to knowledge from anywhere and at transforming Singapore into a knowledge-based economy.

He also talked about the Collaborative Reference and Network Service, in which reference questions are answered by using the collective knowledge of librarians and experts, as an example of a construction of platforms to collaborate in providing services, stipulated as one of the goals of “Library 2010.” Then several cooperative ativities of the NLB with domestic and foreign libraries and institutions were introduced.

He concluded his lecture by declaring that libraries assume an important role of providing useful information to the people, bringing about a change in their life, and that we should positively reach users without waiting for them to visit the libraries.

Handout distributed at the lecture (PDF: 1.88MB)

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