National Parliament Library
| National Parliament Library | |
|---|---|
 Recording from 2007
|
|
| founding | 1948 |
| Duration | 30 million media units |
| Library type | National Library |
| place | Japan |
| ISIL | JP-1000001 |
| operator | state |
| Website | NDL - English website |
The National Parliamentary Library ( Japanese 国立 国会 図 書館 , Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan ) is the national library of Japan . It was founded in 1948 as a parliamentary library. The library is similar in purpose and scope to the Library of Congress in the United States . The institution consists of two main facilities in Nagatachō ( Tokyo ) and Kyoto , as well as other branch libraries. Its director has the rank of permanent state secretary and is appointed by parliament.
The library contains (as of 2008) 34 million documents: 9 million books (6.5 million of them in Japanese and 2.5 million in foreign languages), 12 million periodicals (of which 3.9 million in newspapers) and 13 million other media such as microforms , Records, CDs, DVDs, sheet music , etc. It is one of the largest libraries on earth .
history
The National Parliamentary Library is the successor to three separate libraries, the Library of the Manor and the Library of the House of Representatives , both of which were created with the creation of the Reichstag in 1890, and the Imperial Library , which was created in 1872 under the legislation of the Ministry of Education .
Parliament's power was limited in the pre-war period and its need for information was accordingly small. The original parliamentary libraries never developed the collections or services that could have made them a vital part of genuinely responsible legislative activity. Until Japan's defeat , the executive also had control over all political documents and denied the people and parliament access to important information. To the American occupiers after the defeat in World War II under General Douglas MacArthur , a reform of the parliamentary library seemed to be an important part of the democratization of Japan after its defeat.
In 1946 each of the two chambers of parliament formed its own “Standing Commission for the National Parliamentary Library”. Hani Gorō , a Marxist historian who was imprisoned for thought crimes during the war and elected to the Japanese House of Lords (the successor to the abolished Old House of Lords) after the war , led the reform efforts. Hani had the vision of the new facility both as a “citadel of popular sovereignty” and as a means to implement a “peaceful revolution”. The occupation officers responsible for library reform reported that although the occupation was the impetus for the change, there had already been signs of this on site before the occupation and that the successful reform was thanks to committed Japanese like Hani.
The National Parliamentary Library opened in June 1948 in what is now the State Guest House (formerly Akasaka-Zweigplast) in Moto-Akasaka with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes. In 1949 it merged with the National Library (the former Imperial Library) to become the only national library in Japan. At that time the library received an additional one million volumes from the former national library in Ueno .
In 1961 the library opened at its current location in Nagatachō , near the parliament. 1986 an extension was completed to a total of 12 million books and periodicals accommodate: The Kansai-Kan ( Kansai -Bücherei), which in October 2002 in the city of science Kansai in Seika in district Soraku in Kyoto Prefecture opened, has enough space for a Collection of 6 million objects. In May 2002, the Parliamentary Library opened a new branch, the International Library for Children's Literature in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno. This branch houses around 400,000 children's literature from around the world.
Although the Parliament Library was originally planned as a research library for Parliament, the public is now the primary user of the library's services. In the fiscal year that ended in March 2004, the library received more than 250,000 inquiries about sources, but only 32,000 requests for research from Parliament.
In 2003, over 920 civil servants were employed in the NDL.
Role and collections
As Japan's national library, the library collects copies of all publications published in Japan. However, since the NDL serves as a research library for members of parliament, their staff and the public, it also has extensive collections of publications in foreign languages on a wide range of topics.
Similar to internationally related institutions, the NDL has a legal deposit right that clearly differentiates between state institutions and private publishers. What is astonishing here is the high tax obligation for official publications - thirty copies for state authorities, five copies for the prefectures and cities and three mandatory taxes for municipalities.
Private publishers are required to submit within thirty days, with reimbursement of 50% of the costs and transport expenses. The literature in question is mainly received through two large bookshops.
At the end of March 2002, the NDL u. a. 7,914,460 books and 167,115 magazines, the greater part of which is written in Japanese. Of course, the spectrum of media collected is much more diverse, from electronic publications to Braille .
The cataloging takes place separately according to media type (periodicals, non-book materials, books) and follows the criteria of the Nippon Cataloging Rules (NCR). The data obtained (JAPAN MARC) are recorded weekly in the Japan National Bibliography (Nihon Zenkoku Shoshi). One derivative is the Japan Biblio Disc (J-BISC), on which the Japan Library Association makes the processed data available. In addition, since 1985 journals have been indexed, recorded in a database (May 2004 - 15 158 ZS) and made accessible via the NDL website (also in English). Since July 2011, the Japanese National Library has also been offering an authority file under the title Web NDL Authorities , which includes personal names and keywords.
The inventory was first classified by the Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC) , a mixture of Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and Expansive Classification (EC), for Japanese media and the DDC for Western media. A separate classification completed in 1968 under the name National Diet Library Classification (NDLC) has been used since then for systematic listing within the library and for representation within the national bibliography. The NDLC is alphanumeric (for example mathematics: MA95, X = algebra; X = numerical copy representation) and is also used by some university libraries .
The Internet presence of the NDL forms an interface to services for domestic and foreign users, the latter, for example, through interlibrary loan and document delivery and copying services, access to the growing central catalog and, for example, digitized books from the Meji period due to the steadily increasing participation of individual libraries , for which special conditions, for example the expired copyright , apply (unfortunately the access, like the digitized literature, is in Japanese). The OPAC in particular is popular with users because of the numerous possibilities it offers to influence the search.
It would be extremely difficult to list all the tasks and activities of the NDL that can be used from the age of 18: Coordination of the library system, cooperation with foreign libraries, technical assessment, further training of library staff, information services for parliamentarians and citizens may give a rough impression of the tasks.
Important special collections
The library has eight important special collections:
- Modern politics and constitutional history
- Materials relating to the occupation of Japan after World War II
- Laws and Legislative Records
- science and technology
- cards
- music
- Foreign books on Japan
- Rare books
Modern political and constitutional history
This collection comprises approximately 300,000 objects related to Japan's political and legal modernization in the 19th century, including the archives of original documents by important Japanese statesmen of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries such as Itō Hirobumi , Iwakura Tomomi , Sanjō Sanetomi , Mutsu Munemitsu , Terauchi Masatake and other influential figures of the Meiji period (1868–1912) and Taisho period (1912–1926).
Material on the occupation of Japan after World War II
The library has an extensive microfilm collection of around 30 million pages of documents on the occupation of Japan after World War II. This collection includes documents obtained from Headquarters General, Allied Forces Commander in Chief , the Far East Commission, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team . The originals are in US national archives.
Laws and documents related to legislation
The collection consists of around 170,000 Japanese and 200,000 foreign-language documents on the records of parliament and the legislature in around 70 other countries as well as the official gazettes, statutes, legal opinions and international treaties for around 150 countries.
science and technology
The library maintains a collection of approximately 530,000 books and brochures and 2 million scholarly microfilm titles. This material includes, among other things, foreign doctoral theses in the sciences, the treatises and reports of scientific societies, and catalogs of technical standards .
cards
The Parliamentary Library has a collection of approximately 440,000 maps of Japan and other countries, including topographic , geological, and hydrological maps and diagrams dating back to the early Meiji period (1868–1912) and topographic maps of other countries.
music
The library collects all sound recordings made in Japan and has a collection of approximately 300,000 records and 200,000 CDs.
Foreign books on Japan
In keeping with the tradition of the Imperial Library, the Parliamentary Library collects foreign language material on Japan, including rare and old documents such as: B. Reports from European missionaries who visited Japan in the 16th century.
Rare books and old material
The Parliamentary Library houses the Imperial Library's collection of Japanese-language material from the Edo period (1603–1867) and earlier periods. The main holdings of this collection are:
- About 6,000 documents on the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1867), including records from city councils, the Shogunate's Supreme Court, the Commissioner for Shrines and Temples, and succession documents
- Itō Bunko ( 伊藤 文庫 , after the physician and botanist Itō Keisuke ) and Shirai Bunko ( 白井文 庫 , after the botanist Shirai Mitsutarō ), consisting of 8,000 manuscripts and woodblock print books from the Edo and Meiji periods on Japanese medicine
- Shinjo Bunko , consisting of 11,000 examples of premodern writings on astronomy and calendars as well as ancient Chinese works on the Qing Dynasty , genealogy and local history.
Kansai-kan
The Kansai-kan (Kansai Library), which opened in Kyoto Prefecture in 2002, is the second facility of the Parliamentary Library. The following collections have been moved there:
- most western periodicals,
- Books and other material in non-Japanese Asian languages,
- Audio books,
- certain scientific and technical materials:
Library online resources
The library has built an extensive website in both Japanese and English over the past few years. Your online databases consist of:
- the OPAC of the Library (NDL-OPAC)
- the Web NDL Authorities ,
- the digital archive of the Meiji period,
- the image database for rare books and
- the transcripts of the Imperial Parliament and the National Parliament.
The OPAC of the National Parliamentary Library (NDL-OPAC)
Like many libraries, the library operates a publicly accessible catalog ( OPAC ), with the help of which one can research the entire inventory worldwide in either English or Japanese. With the help of the OPAC, overseas users can identify sources and catalog numbers with which certain materials can be borrowed via international interlibrary loan . In addition, the library offers a paid copy service for foreign scholars.
Web NDL Authorities
The "Web NDL Authorities" database contains the library's authority file .
Meiji Era digital library
One of the most important parts of the website is the Meiji Era Digital Library ( 近代 デ ジ タ ル ラ イ ブ ラ リ ー , Kindai dejitaru raiburarī ). This is the digital descendant of the Maruzen Meiji Microfilm , an ambitious project to secure the entire inventory of the library's collection of books from the Meij era (around 60,000 volumes) on microfilm. The digital library contains the digital images of these microfilms in 10 categories based on the Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC):
- general ( 総 記 , sōki )
- Philosophy ( 哲学 , tetsugaku )
- History ( 歴 史 , rekishi )
- Social Sciences ( 社会 科学 , shakai kagaku )
- Natural sciences ( 自然科学 , shizen kagaku )
- Engineering and Production ( 工 学 ・ 工業 , kōgaku / kōgyō )
- Industry ( 産業 , sangyō )
- Arts and Sports ( 芸 術 ・ 体育 , geijutsu / taiiku )
- Languages ( 語 学 , gogaku )
- Literature ( 文学 , bungaku )
These are images, so a full-text search is not possible, a Japanese-language search for title, author, publisher, subject and table of contents is possible. Periodicals from the Meiji period are not included in this collection.
Rare Book Database
The website also contains the Rare Book Database ( 貴重 書画 像 デ ー タ ベ ー ス , kichōsho gazō dētabēsu ), a collection of digital images of 37,000 illustrated books from before the Edo period. Japanese-language searches by title, author and catalog number are possible.
Records of the Imperial Parliament and the National Parliament
The library provides a database with the records of the Imperial Parliament and the National Parliament. These are the only online databases that allow full text searches. All records from the formation of the National Parliament in May 1947 to the present day can be found on the website kokkai.ndl.go.jp. Currently only the records of the last two (91st and 92nd) sessions of the Imperial Parliament (November 1946 to May 1947) are available.
swell
This article is based on a translation of the article in the English language Wikipedia . This is based on information from the library website. The section on library formation under the US occupation forces is based on Leslie Pincus, "Revolution in the Archives of Memory: The Founding of the National Diet Library in Occupied Japan," in Francis X. Blouin and William G. Rosenberg, eds. , Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar , Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006, ISBN 0-472-11493-X .
See also
Web links
- Literature from and about the National Parliamentary Library in the catalog of the German National Library
- NDL - English website
- Kansai-kan of the NDL (English)
- Meiji Era Digital Library (English summary only)
- Meiji Era Digital Library (Japanese)
- Rare Book Photos Database (Japanese)
- NDL-OPAC (Japanese, English)
- Database of transcripts of parliamentary sessions (Japanese)
- Imperial Parliament Records Database (Japanese)
- OPAC of the National Parliamentary Library (NDL-OPAC)
Footnotes
- ↑ Satoko Muramoto: Condition survey on Japanese books held by the National Diet Library. (PDF; 244 kB) National Parliamentary Library, July 9, 2008, accessed on March 2, 2012 (English).
- ↑ The German embassy has been on this site since the Meiji period . The site was confiscated in 1945 and never returned.
- ^ Web NDL Authorities from National Diet Library of Japan (communicated July 7, 2011)
Coordinates: 35 ° 40 ′ 42 " N , 139 ° 44 ′ 39" E