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The National Diet Library (NDL) is Japan's national library, established in 1948 to provide research facilities for members of parliament, but now used most by the general public. Similar in purpose and scope to the US Library of Congress, the NDL is a deposit library, and collects copies of all publications that originate in Japan. For nearly a decade and a half the Library has been making digital reproductions of paper documents and printed material, but the pace at which it has added to its digitised content has speeded up remarkably in recent years. It has also developed and continues to enhance integrated search services that allow users to cross-search the databases of many other museums, libraries, archives and research institutes in Japan and retrieve information resources from them. A digital archive of records of the earthquake and related disasters that struck Japan in March 2011 is under way.
'Electronic library' and digital archives
In Japan, the term 'digital archives' is used in a variety of ways, but at the National Diet Library (NDL) it is used in two senses: the first as the repository for the digital reproduction, preservation, and sharing of documents and other library material; the second as the framework for the collection, preservation and provision of access to data that is born digital, from websites and other online media. The NDL has built up a portal site for its own digital archives, in co-operation with other digital archives in Japan ('portal' here referring to an integrated search service rather than its more usual sense of a 'gateway' to other services). We are also gradually laying the groundwork for collaboration with other institutions in Asia.
The NDL started experimenting with digital archives in the latter half of the 1990s, which was when new information and communications technologies began to make rapid advances in Japan. It was at this time that we initiated our 'electronic library' project, one of a number of Japanese government-driven initiatives aimed at exploring how best to utilise these advanced technologies. Internationally, we took part in the Bibliotheca Universalis, a project that emerged out of the G7 and G8 Global Information Society conferences held in 1995 and 1996.1
Our participation in these projects deepened our know-how and experience in...