Free Data Service

• Bibliographic Data of the National Diet Library Digital Collections
• Bibliographic Data of Japanese Publications (Most Recent Year)
• Bibliographic ID List
• Beta Version of International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related Organizations (ISIL) LOD
• Bibliographic Data of Books on Japan in Foreign Languages
• Bibliographic Data from "Introduction of Reference Books" in Research Navi
• Bibliographic Data of the Former Collection of the Shanghai Xinhua Bookstore
• Contact for Inquiries about Free Data Service

The National Diet Library (NDL) also provides metadata as Linked Open Data (LOD). Please refer to Linked Open Data (LOD) for general information.

The National Diet Library (NDL) provides basic metadata datasets of the NDL Digital Collections. These datasets include basic bibliographic data for the following:

• Datasets are Japanese only. For English name of each data fields, see the following pdf file. Data fields name in English (PDF: 300KB)
• Books, periodicals, rare books, and old materials (title, volume, series title, edition, creator, publisher, publication year, and ISBN or ISSN, extent such as page numbers or size, subject and classification according to NDC, NDLC, subject, or Old Material Classifications) as well as digitized images (persistent ID and access restrictions)
• Doctoral dissertations digitized by the NDL (title, creator, university, or grantor of degree, dissertation number, degree name, year granted, publication year) as well as digitized images (persistent ID and access restrictions)
• Historical Recordings Collection (title, lyricist, composer, artist/performer, label name, release date, product number, genre) and persistent ID of digitized recordings
• When more than one value exists for a single attribute, the values are separated by "||."

• (1)These metadata datasets are dated May 2, 2024. The information for bibliographic items, access restrictions, or other attributes is subject to change. For the latest information, please see the NDL Search or the NDL Digital Collections. Furthermore, NDL Search and the NDL Digital Collections support only a limited number of concurrent requests to prevent server overload. Access might not be available when web traffic is heavy.
• (2)Periodicals are cataloged by title. Although the first year and the last year of publication are indicated, there might be individual issues or even complete volumes that were neither acquired nor digitized and are therefore unavailable. There are some periodicals for which the year of publication is unknown. When access restrictions differ across multiple volumes of a single periodical, the title is cataloged under the more lenient restriction. For example, a periodical for which some volumes are "available via the Digitized Contents Transmission Service" and other volumes are "available only at the NDL" will be cataloged as available via the Digitized Contents Transmission Service. A periodical for which some volumes are "available online" and other volumes are "available only at the NDL" will be cataloged as available online.

  Material type	Access Restriction
  	Available Online 1	Available only at the NDL and partner libraries 2	Available only at the NDL 3
  Books	xlsx format (part 1): 18 MB xlsx format (part 2): 18 MB tsv format (zip) (part 1): 6 MB tsv format (zip) (part 2): 6 MB approx. 370,000 items	xlsx format (part 1): 24 MB xlsx format (part 2): 24 MB xlsx format (part 3): 23 MB xlsx format (part 4): 21 MB xlsx format (part 5) : 24 MB tsv format (zip) (part 1): 9 MB tsv format (zip) (part 2): 9 MB tsv format (zip) (part 3): 8 MB tsv format (zip) (part 4): 7 MB tsv format (zip) (part 5) : 10 MB approx. 1,040,000 items	xlsx format (part 1): 19 MB xlsx format (part 2): 19 MB xlsx format (part 3) : 16 MB tsv format (zip) (part 1): 8 MB tsv format (zip) (part 2): 7 MB tsv format (zip) (part 3): 7 MB approx. 460,000 items
  Rare Books and Old Materials	xlsx format: 5 MB tsv format (zip): 1 MB approx. 84,000 items	xlsx format: 1 MB tsv format (zip): 200 KB approx. 17,000 items	xlsx format: 200 KB tsv format (zip): 30 KB approx. 3,000 items
  Periodicals	xlsx format: 20 KB tsv format (zip): 10 KB 115 items	xlsx format: 1 MB tsv format (zip): 400 KB approx. 10,000 items	xlsx format: 300 KB tsv format (zip): 100 KB approx. 4,000 items
  Doctoral Dissertations	xlsx format: 2 MB tsv format (zip): 1 MB approx. 10,000 items	xlsx format: 15 MB tsv format (zip): 9 MB approx. 140,000 items	xlsx format: 2 MB tsv format (zip): 1 MB approx. 20,000 items
  Historical Recordings Collection 4	xlsx format: 400 KB tsv format (zip): 200 KB approx. 6,000 items	xlsx format: 3 MB tsv format (zip): 1 MB approx. 40,000 items

  Notes:

  1. Datasets that are available online include the bibliographic data of digital images in the NDL Digital Collections (1) which are in the public domain due to copyright expiration, (2) for which permission was granted by the copyright holder, or (3) for which permission was granted by the Commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
  2. Datasets of books, rare books and old materials, serials and doctoral dissertations that are available at both the NDL and its partner academic or public libraries and to official registered users of the NDL who reside in Japan are bibliographic data of digital images which are not available online and for which the original source is out-of-print or otherwise difficult to obtain.
  3. Dataset that are available only at the NDL are bibliographic data of digital images available only on the premises at the NDL.
  4. The datasets of Historical Recordings Collection's bibliographic data which are available only at the NDL and its partner libraries and those that are available only at the NDL are the same. It contains bibliographic data of recordings, whose right of public transmission has not been cleared. These recordings are available only at the NDL and the Historical Recordings Collection partner libraries.

The National Diet Library (NDL) provides basic metadata dataset of the publications published in Japan. That dataset includes NDL Search URL and basic bibliographic data (FMT (material type), National Bibliography Number, ISBN, ISSN, title and creator, edition, series title, publication information, size and duration, NDL Bibliographic ID, NDL Bibliographic ID (URI)).

• This bibliographic data is metadata about Japanese publications; domestic publications and foreign publications in Japanese. The bibliographic data cataloged by the NDL in the year (from January to December) is included.
• The information of the bibliographic items is subject to change. There are some cases in which the URL does not navigate to the page of the NDL Search.
• FMT (material type) comes in six types: BK (books), CF (computer files), MP (maps), MU (music), SE (serials), and VM (visual materials).

• Bibliographic Data of Japanese Publications (year 2023) (tsv format) (zip: 10.7 MB)

The National Diet Library (NDL) provides the bibliographic data through online services such as the NDL Search, the NDL Digital Collections. They include different bibliographic items and different target materials. For more efficient use of the bibliographic data, the NDL provides the list of identifiers (IDs) which could integrate individual bibliographic data.

• (1)The list includes the following IDs:
  • NDL Bibliographic ID (NDLBibID)
  • National Bibliography Number (JPNO)
  • International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
  • Permanent identifier added by the NDL (NDLJP) (PID)
  For further details, please see the About Bibliographic ID List (txt: 6 KB) (Japanese).
• (2)The list was made from bibliographic data, dated July 25, 2023. The data are subject to change. For the latest data, please see the NDL Search or the NDL Digital Collections. Furthermore, NDL Search and the NDL Digital Collections support only a limited number of concurrent requests to prevent server overload. Access might not be available when web traffic is heavy.

• Bibliographic ID List (The dataset is divided into 2 files.)
  • Bibliographic ID List1_2 (tsv format) (zip: 28.8 MB)
  • Bibliographic ID List2_2 (tsv format) (zip: 31.3 MB)
  • Sample data (tsv format: 2 KB)
  • About Bibliographic ID List (txt: 6 KB) (Japanese)

The ISIL (International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related Organizations) is an identifier which can be allocated to libraries and relevant organizations, such as archives and museums. The NDL operates the National Agency for ISIL in Japan and provides ISIL LOD as part of its initiatives to promote LOD. Please contact us if you have any inquiries or opinions.
This ISIL LOD is version 1.2 Beta (November 7, 2022).

• Beta version of ISIL LOD (The dataset is divided into 8 files.)
  • ISIL-LOD1_8（RDF/XML: 1.8 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD2_8（RDF/XML: 1.8 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD3_8（RDF/XML: 1.8 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD4_8（RDF/XML: 1.9 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD5_8（RDF/XML: 1.8 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD6_8（RDF/XML: 1.8 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD7_8（RDF/XML: 1.8 MB）
  • ISIL-LOD8_8（RDF/XML: 1.5 MB）
  • *For further details, please see the Data Model for the beta version of ISIL LOD (PDF: 620 KB) and About ISIL-LOD (txt: 10 KB) (Japanese).
  • *ISIL-LOD version 1.2 Beta was made from the ISIL list of Japan, dated December 18, 2020. The latest ISIL data is available at ISIL list of Japan (CSV/XLSX).
  • *These datasets also include other data besides ISIL list of Japan:
    • longitudes and latitudes of addresses
    • name entity URIs of the Web NDL Authorities
    • URIs of the library ID (FA Number) of the NII Union Catalogue Database (NACSIS-CAT) (Japanese)
    • Standard Area Codes for Statistical Use (Japanese) of the National Statistics Center
    • URIs of the DBpedia Japanese (Japanese)
    • International Standard Name Identifier: ISNI
• Library Type Code (LibType)
  The LibType is a vocabulary for describing the types of libraries which are used within the ISIL LOD.
  • Library Type Code (dcndl:LibType) (PDF: 125 KB) (Japanese)
  • Library Type Code (dcndl:LibType) (RDF/XML: 4 KB) (Japanese)
• Use Cases
  • The SPARQL endpoint (external link) (by Tsunagu Honma) (accessed November 7, 2022)
    * SPARQL query to retrieve latitude and longitude of libraries in Japan is posted on the GitHub (external link) (accessed November 7, 2022).
  • The International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related Organizations (ISIL) LOD SPARQL endpoint (external link) (by Hiroshi Ueda) (accessed November 7, 2022)
  • The national library map, a map application with ISIL-LOD (external link) (by Hiroshi Ueda) (accessed October 23, 2023)
  • The data of libraries in books (external link) (by Shisyomarohan) (accessed October 23, 2023)
• Reference
  • Akiko Hashizume "Linked Open Data of The International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related Organizations (ISIL)" The Library journal 109 (6) 2015.6. pp. 382-383 (Japanese)
  • Julie Fukuyama "Providing beta version of ISIL LOD" Current Awareness Portal-E No.281 E1675 2015.05.21 (Japanese)

The National Diet Library (NDL) has been acquiring books on Japan in foreign languages published in and out of the country. These datasets include NDL Search URL and selected fields of bibliographic data for such books (NDL Bibliographic ID (URI), NDL bibliographic ID, NDL call number, ISBN, title, creator, edition, series information, publication information, page number, size, language code, country code, NDLC, headings for personal names (authority data ID), and headings for corporate body names (authority data ID).
Two datasets are provided, one of which includes bibliographic data created from January 2002 to September 2024. The other dataset includes data created within six months from April 2024 to September 2024.

• (1)These datasets contain bibliographic data for books in the following categories:
  • Books on Japan in Western languages
    • Books in Western languages on subjects related to Japan
    • Books in Western languages authored by Japanese citizens or people of Japanese heritage
  • Books on Japan in Asian languages
    • Books in Asian languages on subjects related to Japan
    • Books in Asian languages authored by Japanese citizens or people of Japanese heritage
  • Children's books on Japan published in other countries
    • Children's books in foreign languages on subjects related to Japan
    • Children's books in foreign languages authored by Japanese citizens or people of Japanese heritage
• (2)For the language code and country code, ISO 639-2 and ISO 3166 had been used in the Beta version of this dataset. However, MARC Code List for Languages (external link) and MARC Code List for Countries (external link) are used in the present version.
• (3)The information of the bibliographic items is subject to change.

• Bibliographic Data of Books on Japan in Foreign Languages (cumulative version): tsv format (UTF-8) (zip: 7.1 MB)
• Bibliographic Data of Books on Japan in Foreign Languages (from 2024.4 to 2024.9) The dataset is provided in xlsx and tsv format.
  • Bibliographic Data of Books on Japan in Foreign Languages (from 2024.4 to 2024.9): xlsx format (xlsx: 364 KB)
  • Bibliographic Data of Books on Japan in Foreign Languages (from 2024.4 to 2024.9): tsv format (UTF-8) (zip: 180 KB)

The National Diet Library (NDL) selects reference books from the books and periodicals published in Japan it acquires, and introduces them in the "Introduction of Reference Books" section in Research Navi. The following data sets are provided for the reference books introduced in this section.

• Basic bibliographic records (NDL Bibliographic ID, National Bibliography No. (JPNO), NDC Assigned in the Introduction of Reference Books, NDL Call Number, Title, Title Transcription, Material Type, Publication Frequency, Edition, Author, Place of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date, Number of Pages, Size, Accompanying Material Information, Price, ISBN, ISSN, Series Title, Note, Contents)
• Bibliographical introduction about the reference book (limited to certain publications)

Please note the following when using the dataset:

• (1)The dataset will be posted four times a year (January-March, April-June, July-September, and October-December), based on the date the book was recorded in the "Introduction of Reference Books" in Research Navi. The first publication is for October-December 2023.
• (2)It is not possible to output the same file as this dataset from the "Introduction of Reference Books" page of Research Navi or the search results of the NDL Search.
• (3)The information of the bibliographic items is subject to change.
• (4)When using the dataset, you must cite the source of the data as from the "Introduction of Reference Books" in NDL's Research Navi.

• Bibliographic Data from "Introduction of Reference Books" in Research Navi
  The dataset is provided in xlsx and tsv format.
  • Bibliographic Data from "Introduction of Reference Books" in Research Navi (from 2024.7 to 2024.9): xlsx format (xlsx: 64 KB)
  • Bibliographic Data from "Introduction of Reference Books" in Research Navi (from 2024.7 to 2024.9): tsv format (UTF-8) (zip: 28 KB)

• *Please see the Web Archiving Project (WARP) for dataset from before this time.

This dataset includes basic bibliographic data of about 140,000 Chinese books which were formerly owned by the Shanghai Xinhua Bookstore (title, volume, statement of responsibility, edition, place of publication, publisher, publication date, format, series, and the NDL Search URL).

Xinhua Bookstore was a state-owned bookstore originally established in Yan'an in 1937, and as a publishing agent and distributor, played a central role in the publishing industry of China from the 1950s to the 1970s. Its Shanghai branch opened in 1949, and was a major logistics base in the eastern part of China. This dataset is a catalog of this bookstore's holdings. As a substantial collection of Chinese publications from the 1930s to the 1990s, it is a valuable resource that tells the situation of the publishing industry at that time. To learn more about the collection itself, refer to the Research Navi's "Materials held in the Asian Resources Room: ‘Former Collection of the Shanghai Xinhua Bookstore'" (in Japanese).

Please note the following in using the dataset:

• When the original material is written in traditional characters, they are generally converted into the simplified alternative. However, about 1% of the bibliographic data are inputted in traditional characters.
• 6,000 children's books are included in the original collection, but are not in this dataset.
• This bibliographic data is dated March 8, 2024.

If there are any questions or concerns, please contact us using the contact information for inquiries about the Free Data Service.

• Bibliographic Data of the Former Collection of the Shanghai Xinhua Bookstore (xlsx format) (zip: 14.0 MB)
• Bibliographic Data of the Former Collection of the Shanghai Xinhua Bookstore (tsv format) (zip: 6.07 MB)

Standardization Section, Digital Information Distribution Division,
Digital Information Department, National Diet Library
E-mail: standardization