The Digital Resource Landscape for Japanese Studies: Spaces for Change and Growth

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Proposal Application

Abstract

The current proliferation of digital content is having a strong impact on Japanese studies across the globe. The course of that impact varies by discipline, and critically depends on the availability and accessibility of digital content for scholars and educators. Many Japanese institutions and commercial vendors are making Japanese primary and secondary sources available digitally, while institutions outside of Japan also actively digitizing their Japanese resources for scholarly purposes. The volume of such resources is still small, however, and proprietary approaches to storage and design often prevent them from being discovered and widely utilized.
Taking this rapid growth of the information environment as an opportunity for reflection and renewal, this interdisciplinary roundtable of librarians and other professionals from Japan and the US will discuss issues in the current digital landscape from various perspectives.
Tokiko Y. Bazzell, Japan Studies Librarian of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, will draw on her experience engaging in a collaborative, trans-Pacific digital project between Hawaii and Okinawa to discuss trans-national collaborations as they relate to Japanese resources.
Edan Corkill, a journalist with The Japan Times, will discuss his experiences using the Japan Times Archives, a digital archive of every issue published since the newspaper's founding in 1897. He has edited "Japan Times Gone By," a monthly series introducing past articles.
Yukihiro Fukusima, an archivist at the Kyoto Prefectural Library, will introduce Toji Hyakugo Monjo Web as Memory of the World, a huge archive from the 8th century available for use under Creative Commons.
Kumiko Korezumi is a librarian of the Kyoto Prefectural Library and a member of Shishomarohan, which publishes information about literature related to Kyoto as open data, and also organizes the event Wikipedia Town in collaboration with Opendata Kyoto Community.
Kuniko Yamada McVey is the librarian for the Japanese Collection at the Harvard-Yenching Library. She will discuss evolving issues in supporting digital scholarship in US academic libraries, drawing examples from Harvard’s Japanese digital resources.
This roundtable will facilitate discussion across disciplines and professions, while seeking to transform challenges into opportunities by identifying common goals and exploring avenues for collaboration and collective problem-solving.

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Toshinori Egami, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)

Chair

• Toshinori Egami, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)

Discussants

• Tokiko Y. Bazzell, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

• Edan Corkill, The Japan Times

• Yukuhiro Fukusima, Kyoto Prefectural Library

• Kumiko Korezumi, Kyoto Prefectural Library

• Kuniko Yamada McVey, Harvard University