Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Libraries in Japan

Abstract

The National Diet Library (NDL) has been promoting the digitization of its collections since 2000. As of May 2015, approximately 2,485,000 digitized materials are available in the National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Roughly 20% of these digitized materials are available to the public via the Internet, by virtue either of being in the public domain or by permission of the copyright holders. The remaining 80% had been available only within the NDL premises due to restrictions of the Copyright Law.

The 2012 amendment of the Copyright Law enabled the NDL to transmit digitized versions of out-of-print materials and other difficult-to-obtain items to other libraries in Japan. With the January 2014 launch of the NDL’s Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Libraries in Japan, more than 1,375,000 materials previously available only at the NDL may now be viewed at participating libraries throughout Japan. These materials include books acquired before 1969 and periodicals published before 2001.

A library which wishes to participate in this service first needs to apply to the NDL. As of May 2015, a total of 507 libraries, including 282 public libraries, 210 academic libraries, and 15 special libraries are recipients of this NDL service, which enables users of these libraries to browse digital images of text as well as to request photocopies.

This service for providing digitized materials to users living far from the NDL premises is one more part of our efforts to provide equal access to digitized materials for the general public everywhere in Japan.