Help : Digitization of materials

The NDL holds enormous paper-form publications. From our collections, we have been digitizing materials sequentially, and making their contents and digital images available on the Internet through our digital library services including the NDL Digital Collections.
One of the advantages of digitizing paper materials is that people can access materials any time and anywhere on the Internet without visiting the NDL in person. Digitization also prevents materials from deterioration and damage by use, which is an issue closely related with paper-form publications. Consequently, we can say that digitization is an effective method in light of both use and preservation.

There are many problems in preserving audio-visual materials for a long time. The record media will deteriorate in time and become unreadable. The playback equipment can disappear at some stage as a result of the appearance of new specifications or format wars. In particular, almost all the analog audio-visual materials are replayed by direct contact of a reader device with the record medium

The Library offer digitized materials in place of original source documents in order to avoid damage or loss of these materials. This was recognized in the revision of copyright law enforced in January 2010 (Article 31, Paragraph 6 of the Copyright Law). Please refer to the National Diet Library policy governing digitization of its collection items, entitled "Digitization of library materials" (in Japanese).

In order to preserve the original documents, we ask that you read any digitized materials on a digital screen.