Cooperation with other institutions

The National Diet Library (NDL) promotes cooperation with many domestic and foreign libraries and other types of cultural institutions, aiming at effective information services and long-term preservation of digital resources. The major activities are as follows:

• Cooperation with domestic institutions
  • NDL Search
  • Digital Information Resources Roundtable
  • Memorandum of the operation of the Japan Link Center (JaLC) Project
  • Research on the operation of digital archives in cultural and academic institutions
• International cooperation
  • World Digital Library
  • International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC)
  • China-Japan-Korea Digital Library Initiative (CJKDLI)
  • East Asia Digital Library (EADL)
  • Conference of Directors of National Libraries in Asia and Oceania(CDNLAO)
  • IFLA PAC Regional Centre for Asia
  • Bibliotheca Universalis Project
• Lectures and international symposiums on digital library services

NDL Search is a search service designed to be an access point from which you can use the wealth of knowledge from public libraries, archives, museums, institutes of academic research and the NDL. The list of search targets is available on the NDL Search website (Japanese only).

The Digital Information Resources Roundtable is designed to promote cooperation between museums, libraries and archives to address common challenges related to digital information resources. For details, please refer to "Digital Information Resources Roundtable."(link to Web Archiving Project (WARP)).

In May 2012, the National Diet Library (NDL) concluded the "Memorandum of the operation of the Japan Link Center (JaLC) Project" with the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and the National Institute of Informatics (NII). This will enhance the convenience of the domestic and international information services and promote international distribution of Japanese academic contents by popularizing DOI in Japan. For details about DOI, please refer to "Assignment of a DOI name to an object by NDL".

In FY2009, the NDL conducted research on the operation of digital archives in domestic public libraries, university and college libraries, archives, museums, etc. The research results are available on the Current Awareness Portal website (Japanese only).

The World Digital Library (link to LC website) is a digital library project initiated by the Library of Congress and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), featuring digital contents contributed by many institutions all over the world. The NDL provides images of rare books and other materials from its holdings.

Please refer to “World Digital Library (link to Web Archiving Project (WARP)),” for more detailed information including the list of contents contributed by the NDL.

The International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) was established in 2003, mainly consisting of national libraries. It aims at the technical development of web archiving by collaboration of national libraries and other related institutions.

The NDL joined the IIPC in 2008 to cope with challenges related to harvesting, preserving and providing websites based on the internationally cooperative framework. The NDL participates in the Access Working Group and actively works on the multilingual support in NutchWAX (search engine).

In August 2010, the NDL concluded the China-Japan-Korea Digital Library Initiative (CJKDLI) agreement with the National Library of China (NLC) and the National Library of Korea (NLK). This project, started in 2007 from a proposal by Dr. Makoto Nagao, the Librarian of the NDL at the time, aims to construct a framework to provide on the Internet integrated search and access to the cultural and scientific heritage of the three countries. The main points are as follows.

1. It will provide easy integrated access to the cultural and scientific heritage of the three countries, to enable people to discover rich multilingual and culturally diverse contents and to contribute to the academic world.
2. The NDL, NLC and NLK will cooperate on the standardization of metadata schema, integration of the information services (portal) and long-term access to digital information. The three libraries will bring to reality the first phase of a trilateral integrated information service by developing the interoperability of the portals owned by each library.
3. The NDL, NLC and NLK will make efforts to expand domestic digital collaboration in each country among libraries and other institutions such as museums and archives.

• Press Release (PDF: 116KB) (Japanese only)
• "World Digital Library and CJKDLI – International Cooperation of the National Diet Library" (Japanese only)
  (Presented at the Library Fair & Forum 2010 (November 25 and 26, 2010))
  Presentation slides(PDF: 900KB); Handout (PDF: 304KB)

The NDL has been conducting annual mutual visit programs with both libraries; with the NLC since 1981 and with the NLK since 1997 (For details of the mutual visit programs, please refer to "International Cooperation").

The East Asia Digital Library (EADL) is a portal site for cultural and scientific resources in East Asian languages. Configuration and operation of the EADL is handled by the National Library of Korea (NLK) in cooperation with the National Diet Library, Japan (NDL). A beta version of the EADL was launched in December 2020, and plans are currently underway to enhance functionality as well as expand the available data.

The Conference of Directors of National Libraries in Asia and Oceania (CDNLAO) promotes exchange of information and mutual cooperation among member libraries. The NDL is responsible for the CDNLAO website and the CDNLAO Newsletter.

At the 2008 meeting held in Japan, four areas to be addressed by collaboration of member libraries were selected. The NDL is playing a leading role in the area of web archiving.

IFLA PAC (Preservation and Conservation) is one of the core activities of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). It deals with the preservation of digital information resources as well as paper materials such as books and magazines. The NDL has been taking a major role as the Regional Centre for Asia since 1989. Please refer to “IFLA PAC Regional Centre for Asia” for details.

The Bibliotheca Universalis Project was carried out with the cooperation of national libraries and other institutions from 1995 to 2005 (initially, it began as the G7 (G8) digital library project; in 1999, its framework was altered to a digital library project run by national libraries). This project contributed to the promotion of international cooperation on digital library projects and finished in 2005.

The NDL holds lecture meetings and international symposiums on digital library services, inviting domestic and foreign leading figures as speakers.

Please refer to “Events” for details of each event including application method.