2023-1-4 New Year's Greetings for January 4, 2023

Best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year. On this joyous occasion, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all for your kind support of the National Diet Library.

Recent developments in information technology as well as the COVID-19 pandemic have greatly transformed our social activities and interpersonal communications. In response to this, the National Diet Library continues its efforts to develop initiatives in accordance with our vision statement—the National Diet Library, Vision 2021–2025—and to create services that we are confident will accurately connect our patrons to the information resources they need for their intellectual activities.

For many years, the National Diet Library has been working to make remote access to information more convenient for patrons no matter where they are. Last year, the launch of our Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Individuals made digitized versions of out-of-print or otherwise difficult-to-obtain materials available to residents of Japan. Thanks to this service, access to a tremendous volume of material is now easier than ever via personal computers or other devices. And in the first half of 2023, we will continue to improve the availability of these digitized materials by adding the ability to print them out and significantly increasing the number of available items. We hope you will take advantage of this and all our other services, as well.

The National Diet Library is also committed to the acquisition and long-term preservation of online materials (digital books and magazines) published in Japan. As of January this year, we are acquiring and making available to our patrons a wide range of online materials published by the private sector, irrespective of whether they are free of charge, available for a fee, or encrypted using digital rights management. The National Diet Library remains committed to acquiring and preserving online materials for current and future patrons.

Entering the third year of our vision statement, we will continue our efforts to expand the nation's digital information infrastructure, to earn the understanding and cooperation of all our stakeholders, and to do our best to implement services that accurately meet the needs of both the National Diet and the general public. We very much appreciate and look forward to your continued support and cooperation in 2023.

YOSHINAGA Motonobu
Director General of the National Diet Library