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Page 1: Academic Libraries in Japan

INTERNATIONAL PE

RSPECTIVES...

· Academic Libraries in Japan1by Rowena Cullen and Haruki Nagata

Available online 11 February 2008

Academic libraries in Japan are well resourcedby international standards, and support Japan’sinternationally recognized research capability

well, but there are also ways in which theyreflect Japan’s strong bureaucratic culture.

Recent changes to the status of nationaluniversity libraries have seen a new interest in

customer service, and service qualitydevelopment. Potential changes in education forlibrarianship and an organisational focus on stafftraining and development are likely to enhanceservice delivery in Japanese academic libraries.

Rowena Cullen, School of Information Management,Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand(Visiting Research Fellow, University of Tsukuba, Japan,December 2006–March 2007)<[email protected]>;Haruki Nagata, Graduate School of Library,Information and Media Studies, University of Tsukuba, Japan.

The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 34, Number 2, pages 163–167

INTRODUCTION

The Japanese university system is a mixture of nationaluniversities, private universities, and local public universities.National universities, of which there are eighty-seven, andlocal public universities (numbering eighty-six) are fundedby national and local governments, respectively (includingboth prefectures and cities). Private universities, by far thelargest group (there are over 500), are also controlled andpartially funded by the national government. “Nationaluniversities dominate the ranks of the most prominentinstitutions, and only a few local and private universitiesenjoy comparable status.”2 All universities are required bylaw to have a library, the first being created by an Imperialedict in 1886, which established the Imperial UniversityLibrary, affiliated to the predecessor of the present-dayUniversity of Tokyo. Tokyo is the oldest national university,and was founded in 1877. Keio University, the oldest privateuniversity, was founded in 1858.

On average, the Japan Library Association estimates,library material expenditure is approximately 1.4 percent ofthe total institutional expenditure. Total library expenditureis, on average, 3.2 percent of total institutional expenditurefor universities in the 2005 fiscal year according to thestatistics from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,Science and Technology (MEXT).3 All universities in Japan,whether national, public, or private are subject to tightcontrol by MEXT, a variety of regulations governing themanagement of their libraries according to the type ofinstitution. In 2003, the National University CorporationLaw, which gave national universities corporate status, cameinto force. This requires them to develop their distincteducational and research functions through a more autono-mous management policy. As a consequence, all nationaluniversity employees, including library staff, are no longergovernment officials. A further impact of this change tocorporate status has been felt in terms of institutionalincome, resulting in some restructuring and down-sizing tolimit costs, and the outsourcing of some activities, such asdigitization, to other parts of the university. At the sametime, these changes are encouraging the national universitylibraries to focus on service to their academic communities.This has resulted in greater awareness of the need to consultwith users about their needs, and to seek user input intodecisions on services and collection development. This inturn is leading to a need for staff training in the area ofservice delivery and customer service.

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Page 2: Academic Libraries in Japan

EDUCATION FOR LIBRARIANSHIP

The standard qualification for librarians in Japan is a certificateknown as the ‘Shisho,’ issued by the Ministry of Education,Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). (The quali-fication ‘Shisho’ is not the official qualification for librarians ingeneral, only for librarians in public libraries. But in practice,and for convenience, it is treated as if it applied for employmentin all branches of librarianship.) Requirements for certificationinclude a university degree and twenty credits of library scienceknowledge, which may be part of the candidate’s degreestudies, or maybe gained through undertaking a special course,leading to the Shisho qualification. Over 200 universities andcolleges in Japan offer courses in library science, from two-yearcourses in junior colleges, through to four-year undergraduateor postgraduate degrees. Leading institutions in library educa-tion, each of which has a strong research ethos as well, includeKeio University, the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, aswell as the former University of Library and InformationScience, now part of the University of Tsukuba. However,although about 10,000 people are awarded librarian certificatesannually, “less than 5% gain employment in a library,”4 and lessthan 50 percent of library staff currently hold a professionalqualification.5

The low status of librarians in Japanese society, and theincreasing use of untrained staff in libraries while professionalwork is outsourced, have been a matter of concern to the JapanLibrary Association for some time.6 Continuing educationcourses for academic librarians offered by the National Instituteof Informatics, and universities such as Tokyo and Tsukuba, arecritical to staff development, which is seen by leading LibraryDirectors as a key issue for the profession.

This situation may soon change. The Japan Society ofLibrary and Information Science has conducted a large-scaleresearch project called LIPER (Library and InformationProfessions and Educational Renewal) from 2003 to 2005,studying “the history, current situation, and future prospects ofLIS education, both in Japan and in foreign countries, in order toassess the need for a possible reform of the Japanese LISeducation system.” Their outcomes are published in IFLA andA-LIEP conferences.7,8 A further project, LIPER2, not yetreported, succeeded it from 2006. The project team concludedthat the “Shisho” qualification is no longer adequate and that the10,000 people awarded the qualification each year is too high anumber. Based on research data, such as a job analysis oflibrarians working in academic libraries, and competenciesneeded in the sector, they are likely to recommend a newqualification in LIS, based on international standards for theprofession.

SERVICES AND RESOURCES

Collections of the larger national university libraries (such asKyushu, Tokyo, Tsukuba) are typically of several millionbooks, which may include over a third in English or languagesother than Japanese. The University of Tokyo Library, forexample, has over five million books in Japanese, and nearly thesame number in other languages. Keio, one of the largest privateuniversity libraries, has well over four million books. Localpublic and private university collections are usually a little morethan a quarter of this size. Journal collections in the major lib-raries may include an average of around 35,000 titles (includingduplicates in branch libraries). Some major libraries were

164 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

nominated to collect foreign specialist journals in specialistareas (e.g., politics, or medicine and life sciences). Since theadvent of electronic access to full-text journals throughpublishers and international vendors such as Elsevier, Springer,Blackwell Synergy Science, WileyInterscience, ISI, Ebsco,ProQuest, etc., libraries are able to provide a full range ofdatabases, e-journals and e-books, as well as their core printedcollections. There is presumably a decrease in the number ofduplicates in the larger and more dispersed institutions. Al-though specialization has decreased somewhat since e-journalsbecame available, there are still issues attached to electronicdocument delivery, since Japanese copyright law does not yetpermit the exchange of electronic formats—items requestedmust be printed and delivered physically.

Reference services are offered in the majority of universitylibraries, and almost universally in the national university lib-raries, but not all of these have separate reference departments,and specialist reference staff. However, information literacyprograms, which are encouraged by the Government, and thevarious academic library consortia, are more widespread. This ispossibly because IL programs can be introduced as an ope-rational initiative. Staffing deployment is a higher level matter,and impacted by staffing policies that affect most public ins-titutions in Japan—the use of ‘generalist’ staff, who areroutinely redeployed across a range of duties within aninstitution.

Ninety percent of academic libraries have their own onlinepublic catalog connected to the Internet and larger universitylibraries often make their specialist collections and even theirrare books available to the public. In most university libraries,the bibliographic and holding data of the collection are input tothe national database prepared by National Institute ofInformatics (NII), known as NACSIS-CAT (see below).

RESOURCE-SHARING

Like academic libraries (and other libraries) elsewhere, Japan-ese academic libraries have been active in forming cooperativeconsortia to secure more favourable access to electronic journaldatabases. The Association of National University Libraries(ANUL) has formed a consortium to which all national univ-ersity libraries belong. The consortium assists individual insti-tutions by bargaining collectively to secure a contract, butindividual institutions manage their own access to the journals.A group of private university libraries formed a Private Univ-ersity Library Consortium (PULC), which the Public univer-sities now also have joined. PULC provides access to ISI’s Webof Science, and other e-journal subscriptions, for a reduced fee.In addition, the National Institute of Informatics Repository ofOnline Journals and Electronic publications (NII-REO) pro-vides access to approximately 1600 key scientific journals foruse by members of subscribing universities.

NATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHIC STRUCTURESAs noted above, most university libraries in Japan maintain theirown local catalogs, using shared cataloguing data created byNACSIS-CAT, operated by the National Institute for Infor-matics (NII). The Japanese Inter-library Lending scheme(NACSIS-ILL) is also managed by the NII. The NACSIS-CAT database has over eight million bibliographic records forbooks, and over 300,000 bibliographic records for journals. Themajority of university libraries host a link to NACSIS-WEBCAT, the national bibliographic database) on their Web-

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based OPAC, thus supporting searching across the entirenational collection.4

Library systems used in Japanese academic libraries aregenerally Japanese products, the three major systems in use beingFujitsu, Ricoh, and NTT Data. A key issue in developing theseapplications is their ability to handle the multiple scripts used inJapanese (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, and roman script), as wellas the Chinese and Korean languages. Cataloguing data are basedon a number of different MARC standards, e.g., Japan-MARC,based on UNIMARC, developed and maintained by the NationalDiet (Parliament) Library; TRC-MARC, developed by theJapanese Library Service (Toshokan Ryutsu Center); and NC/MARC, created by and used for NACSIS-CAT records.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATICS

In 1970, the need for a distribution system for academic in-formation was identified (see NII Web site), and followed by anumber of early initiatives, e.g., the Research Centre for Libraryand Information Science, which was established at the Universityof Tokyo in 1976. This was followed by the Center forBibliographic Information in 1983, which started a shared cataloginformation service in 1984. In 1986, the National Centre forScience Information Systems was founded, and the Operation ofScience Information Network and Information Retrieval Servicebegan in 1987. The Japanese national Interlibrary Loan systemwas established in 1992 and an Internet backbone for exchange ofscientific information (SINET) was started in the same year. Oncethis core infrastructure had been put in place, a number of othergateways and networks were able to be established. The NationalDiet Library was linked to the NII systems in 1996, and theElectronic Library Service, NACSIS-ELS, was established in1997. The National Institute for Informatics itself was establishedin April 2000, in the National Centre of Sciences Building, takingover the functions of NACSIS.

NII’s main objectives are to foster Japanese research intoinformatics (this includes offering research degrees), and theprovision of service operations related to academic infrastruc-ture (networks and contents) to support academic activity inJapan and beyond. In addition to its major services listed above(i.e., NACSIS-CAT, NACSIS-ILL, and NII-REO), NII main-tains an information portal, GeNii-Academic Contents Portal,which consists of:

CiNii—a bibliographic database of Japanese research output– research articles, research bulletins, and conference papers–which includes full-text where available, and citation in-formation linking related papers.

WebCat Plus—a bibliographic database of books, rarebooks, and journals, with locations.

Kaken—which is a database of information about and resultsfrom research activities in Japan that have received publicfunding from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,Science and Technology (MEXT).

Nii-DBR—search interface that searches over severaldatabases at once, including those in research institutes andmajor research libraries.5

Future developments, already underway but not fully ope-rational, include the Cyber Science Infrastructure, which willlink all major Japanese research institutions through a newnational and international superband network, SINET.

MANAGEMENT OF JAPANESE ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

The management of Japanese academic libraries is one areawhere differences between Japanese libraries and Western lib-raries are most apparent. The senior executive in the Japaneseuniversity library, the Director, is normally a senior academicon secondment to the position. This person generally hasstanding in the academic community, and may hold severalother important positions within the university. The role of theDirector is very much focused on external relations, andincreasingly on securing income. The Deputy Director isgenerally a career library professional post, and that person willmanage day to day operations of the library, participate inprofessional committees within the library, and at local ornational level, and manage the staff. Among library staff,approximately 50 percent or less are likely to hold a libraryqualification, most commonly the “Shisho” referred to earlier(although it is not intended for academic librarians), but themajority of employees are university graduates. Staff areexpected to be generalists in their profession, and are rotatedaround various functions within the library (cataloguing,circulation, reference inquiries, serials, etc.). This also includesspecial collections such as audio–visual materials and rarematerials. Considerable emphasis is therefore placed on in-house training as staff move from department to department,and courses offered by the universities teaching in this area(e.g. Tokyo and Tsukuba) as well as NII, the Association ofUniversity Libraries (ANUL) or the Japan Association ofPrivate University Libraries (JASPUL), etc. The Ministry ofEducation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)also offers continuing education courses.

Seniority within the library is primarily based on years ofservice. The first career grade for staff is ‘freshman librarian’which covers staff from their first postqualification appoint-ment, and the second is ‘sophomore’ librarian. Above this rank,staff need to be appointed to specific management roles at thesame or another institution. Staff wishing to transfer to anotherinstitution, for personal reasons such as relocation, or thoseseeking a specific position at a national university used to makean application through the Ministry, which made appointmentsin conjunction with the university, but the system has been freedup in recent years and is more of an ‘open market.’ Thechanging status of the national university libraries due to thenew corporate status of the national universities is giving themgreater freedom to manage their staff and is changing theirappointment and promotion processes.

Service delivery is also managed somewhat differently inJapanese academic libraries. In many libraries, particularlypublic and private university libraries, there is no separatereference department with a dedicated staff. Reference inquiriesare handled by staff on duty at the circulation desk. However, inmost libraries, the OPAC is freely available on the Web, andmany offer suggestions for search strategies, list subject re-sources in a specific topic area, and invite interlibrary loanrequests or online inquiries. (Figures from MEXT indicatethat currently 100 percent of national universities, and over90 percent of local universities have their OPAC availableonline.) The larger institutions, such as University of TokyoLibrary, offer well-developed online reference services.Support within the library may also be offered on occasionby volunteers, drawn from alumni and interested members ofthe local community who can advise students on library use.

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Page 4: Academic Libraries in Japan

Links of this kind with local communities are often made,as well as links between institutions in the same neighbor-hood. An example of this is Fukuoka Prefecture LibraryAssociation, which sponsors agreements for mutual lendingand cooperation between Kyushu University Library, theFukuoka City Public Library, and the Fukuoka PrefecturalLibrary. In Tokyo, the Yamanote Line Private UniversityConsortium links several institutions (Aoyama Gakuin Uni-versity, Kokugakuin University, Gakushuin University, ToyoUniversity, Hosei University, Meiji University, Meiji GakuinUniversity, Rikkyo University) which are physically linked bythe Japan Railways Tokyo Loop line (the Yamanote Line).The University of Tokyo itself has opened its collections toresidents in the surrounding suburbs for many years and, inaccordance with government regulations, now extends lendingprivileges to local citizens.

TECHNOLOGY USE IN JAPANESE ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

In a technologically advanced country such as Japan, the use oftechnology in libraries contrasts with what can seem to outsidersa fairly bureaucratic approach to management and staffing. Theuniversity library’s Web interface can often be a central hublinking the user to a wealth of online resources, incorporating theOPAC (often accessible by mobile phone as well), ‘Mylibrary’personalization, links to e-journals, digital libraries of specialcollections owned by the institution, and the institutionalrepository. As new buildings come on stream, technologiessuch as RFID are used to manage the circulation of materials,and robotic systems retrieve books rapidly from closed stackcollections. The concept of the hybrid library is often talkedabout—not all the content will be digital but a combination ofelectronic and print material will use the latest technology fordiscovery and retrieval.

Digitization projects are widespread. Many of Japan’sunique literary treasures and rare manuscripts are held inboth national and private university libraries, along withhistorical collections, such as the collection of historicalmaterials from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century onEuropean Spas and Bath Therapy at Kyushu—part of itsnotable historical collection of medical books. University ofTokyo Library has several notable digital collections, e.g.,the Fujikawa-Bunko (collection), Early Christian manuscriptsin Japan, Japanese old books from the General Librarycollection and the Edo-Period, and the Haikai PoetryCollection. The Katei Bunko is a digital library of anotherprecious collection in the Main Library, containing thearchive and writings of the Meiji period writer and journalistWatanabe Katei (1865–1924).

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology (MEXT) has encouraged Japanese universitylibraries to develop institutional repositories to promotesharing of knowledge throughout Japan and internationally.The initiative has already been taken up by approximatelytwo-thirds of the national universities, and some researchinstitutes. There are currently seventy Institutional Reposi-tories listed on the NII Web site, which includes two‘associated repositories,’ where several universities join toestablish an IR system. For example, the Yamagata Universityrepository (YOU Campus repository) includes around 100items from nearby local public universities and colleges,

166 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

which enhance the 950 items deposited by YamagataUniversity researchers. The Hiroshima Associated RepositoryProject (HARP) is also building a repository which willinclude items from nearby local public universities. Thelargest repositories are those of the Nagoya University, KyotoUniversity, Hokkaido University, University of Tsukuba, andChiba University, which each contain many thousands ofitems, including theses, books, articles, preprints and researchreports, and research databases. The full list can be accessed athttp://www.nii.ac.jp/irp/info/list-e.html. D-Space is the mostcommonly used software, but Fedora is also used.

EVALUATION

An accreditation system has been introduced into Japaneseuniversities since 2003 after several trials of quality controlconducted as part of a series of revisions of higher educationlaw and bylaws over the past twenty years. Universitylibraries must conduct an assessment as a part of aninstitutional accreditation process. Although some libraries’assessments are well handled, taking into account roles andfunctions, the traditional measures which only focus on inputsand a limited range of output dimensions have still beenapplied in most cases.

Some libraries have carried out a SERVQUAL evaluation,and the Keio University Library has been considering usingLibQUAL+ survey for assessing library service quality from auser satisfaction’s point of view. ARL has developed a Japaneselanguage instrument for this purpose. But this is a small numberout of more than 700 university libraries throughout Japan. Agrowing awareness in the library profession across and amongthe leading Library Directors that university libraries are aservice industry, providing service to academic communities andstakeholders, may lead to greater emphasis on evaluation infuture.

SUMMARY/DISCUSSION

Despite ongoing complaints from the Library Directors aboutshortages of funding, and the burden of cost imposed by thefalling Japanese yen, the larger Japanese academic libraries donot seem noticeably poorly resourced compared with theirWestern counterparts, and are assiduous in ensuring a goodsupply of international books and journals as well as Japanesematerials. This undoubtedly has a role to play in maintainingJapan’s competitive place in global science, technology,biosciences, and other areas of academic endeavour.

The key role played by the Ministry of Education, Culture,Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and to a lesser extentby the NII, especially in the areas of national infrastructure,support for consortia, and involvement in staffing and training,suggests that even under the new corporate national universitysystem, academic libraries in Japan may have less autonomythan in other jurisdictions, which may hold back innovation,and even service quality.

Certainly there are concerns expressed openly in the pro-fession about the future, and less optimism than might beexpected in what is a wealthy country with very higheducational standards. For example, the Japan LibraryAssociation has expressed its concern (on its Web site)about the decrease in the number of eighteen year oldscoming into university education, a situation which is of greatconcern to university administrators. Budget cuts, reducedstaffing, and the lack of professional knowledge and

Page 5: Academic Libraries in Japan

appropriate skills in staff, all leading to a greater use ofoutsourcing than is common in western countries, are alsomatters of concern in the profession. Comments are also madeabout the lack of power of purchasing consortia in Japancompared with those of North America and elsewhere,although it is not clear why this should be.

However, few would link these concerns (especially thelack of professional expertise) to the Japanese system of staffmanagement. Great value is seen in having a LibraryDirector who is a powerful and respected member of theuniversity academic community leading the managementteam. It is felt that a library professional would not beaccorded the same status. However, the rotation of staff, sothat the library staff are multiskilled generalists, not insularin their outlook or focused on one area of the library, meansthat there also is little opportunity for people to develop ahigh level of expertise in some critical areas for theadvancement of libraries in the twenty-first century. Itremains to be seen what long-term impact the greateropenness of Japanese academic communities, so evident inrecent years, and the changing structure of nationaluniversities will have on these issues. Certainly the desireto give the highest service to support the advance knowledgeand education is strongly felt throughout the academic librarycommunity in Japan.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. This article is based on source material such as documentationprovided by a number of university libraries, published articles,institutional Web sites, and interviews with Library Directors.

2. Kimio Hosono, “Changes in University and Public libraries inJapan,” IFLA Journal 32 (2006): 119–130.

3. These figures are drawn from the Web site of the Ministry ofEducation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).Available: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/001/05070501/pdf/016.pdf (accessed December 12, 2007), and http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/001/index20/07012502/001/025.pdf (ac-cessed December 12, 2007).

4. Toru Koizumi et al, “Librarianship in Japan,” Encyclopedia ofLibrary and Information Science. New York, N.Y.: Dekker, 2003.

5. Hosono, “Academic Libraries in Japan,” Encyclopedia of Libraryand Information Science. New York, N.Y.: Dekker, 2004.

6. See Japan Library Association Web site at http://www.jla.or.jp(accessed December 12, 2007).

7. Makiko Miwa, “Trends and Issues of LIS Education in Asia,”Proceedings of the Asian-Pacific conference on Library andInformation Education and Practice, Singapore, 2006. 18–26.

8. Shuichi Ueda, Akira Nemoto, Makiko Miwa, Mitsuhiro Oda,Haruki Nagata, and Teruyo Horikawa, LIPER (Library andInformation Professions and Education Renewal) Project in Japan.World Library and Information Congress, 71st IFLA GeneralConference and Council, 2005. Available: http://ww.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/Progrmme.html (accessed December 12, 2007).

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