Passing on the Lessons of the Great East Japan Earthquake to Future Generations—The National Diet Library Great East Japan Earthquake Archive

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which struck on March 11, 2011, the Japanese government recognized an urgent need to create a national archive of information about this unprecedented natural disaster, so that the learned lessons from this experience would not be lost. Having an obligation as a national library to collect, preserve, and share materials that record all aspects of Japan’s cultural heritage, the National Diet Library (NDL), in cooperation with other Japanese government agencies, has responded to this need by creating a portal site, called HINAGIKU, through which researchers can search and access a wide variety of earthquake archives. In this paper, I will report on our achievements as well as the challenges we face in configuring HINAGIKU to facilitate access to documentation published or archived primarily by the national and municipal government agencies.

At present, HINAGIKU enables access to materials documenting both past experience and current disaster prevention planning via an integrated search functionality of multiple digital archives established by municipal governments, academic institutions, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and other organizations as well as the NDL. Visitors to HINAGIKU are able to search records stored at the NDL and other institutions, and new knowledge generated from such research can also be integrated into HINAGIKU as new content.

Over time, as interest in earthquake-related materials decreases, it becomes imperative that the NDL acquire and preserve these materials before such archives disappear. The NDL also has a role to play in handing down these most valuable records to future generations by managing issues related to copyright, personality rights, and secondary use, thereby making HINAGIKU even more useful.