Background || History || Progress|| URLs|| Miscellaneous
Background to the Union Catalogue
The construction of the UK Union Catalogue of Japanese Books began in 1991 when NII (National Institute of Informatics, formerly NACSIS) in Japan offered free access to its NACSIS-CAT (online cooperative cataloguing system) files for a project of a consortium of UK libraries.
The aim of the project was to compile an 'original script' union catalogue of modern printed Japanese materials held in the UK and at the same time contribute towards a worldwide catalogue of Japanese books within the NACSIS database (http://webcat.nii.ac.jp).
The UK Union Catalogue of Japanese Books was the first international project for NACSIS-CAT. The original members of the project were the University of Cambridge Library, the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, the British Library Oriental & India Office Collections, the University of Stirling Library and the East Asian Studies Library at the University of Sheffield, followed later by the School of Oriental and African Studies Library.
Since then, other libraries with smaller collections have also joined the project, such as the Japan Foundation London Language Centre Library, the British Museum, JETRO London, the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, and the Needham Research Institute.
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All the participating libraries installed a software from NII with the system requirements of a PC equipped with Japanese Operating System. The software provides them with a direct link to the NACSIS-CAT database.
If the record already exists in the database, the library will register/add its holding. If it is not present in the database, they will have to create a new bibliographic record in NACSIS-CAT.
Once the library has registered its holding, the bibliographic record can be downloaded into their local 'allegro' catalogue. Many of the UK libraries use a software called 'allegro' for their local OPAC; since it has the advantage of being able to display Japanese records in their original script, it works well with NACSIS-CAT and it is affordable for small libraries.
It has been developed by Braunschweig Technical University in Germany. NII provides training to its members on the use of the shared cataloguing system.
Regular updating of the Union Catalogue is done by ftp from NII to the University of Cambridge Library and the Bodleian Japanese Library at the University of Oxford, supplemented by CD-ROM sent once a year.
The first such CD-ROM was produced by NACSIS in 1993. This is the UK UNION CATALOGUE OF JAPANESE BOOKS which has been made accessible by both libraries through the web.
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Having noted that great strides were being made by European colleagues using the NACSIS-CAT in their retro-con cataloguing task, the UK project group felt it was high time to consider the possibility of expansion of UK union catalogue to a European-wide one. This was proposed at and endorsed by the 2003 EAJRS conference, and was consequently raised later in November at the meeting of the German-speaking library group (Arbeitskreis Japan-Bibliotheken), where a general consensus was given.
Following the receipt of agreement from all NACSIS-CAT member libraries in Europe, NII kindly made the arrangements to prepare European data, its bulk import into the allegro catalogue was carried out in August 2005. Weekly ftp updates from NII now include all European data as well.
Thus the Oxford version of the NACSIS union catalogue has become a European one, meanwhile the Cambridge one remains as the UK union catalogue.
Only a few of the libraries have completed the retrospective conversion of catalogue records for older items. Also the more recent Japanese acquisitions of SOAS may not be represented in the catalogue, so it is necessary to consult their OPAC separately for these (http://library.soas.ac.uk).
NACSIS-CAT user group meetings and training workshops are regularly held in cooperation with NII. Next training workshop is scheduled for February 2011, to be held in Berlin, jointly organized by NII, Japanisches Kulturinstitut and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, co-organized by the Japan Library Group and others.
We would like to express our profound gratitude to NII for their longtime support to the union catalogue project.
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Links to the UK Union Catalogue
The URL of the European union catalogue of Japanese books are :
http://www.niicat.eu/
The URL of the Cambridge vernacular version is:
http://juc.lib.cam.ac.uk/
and the URL of the Cambridge romanised version is:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/japanese-keyword-search
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Tool kit for European NACSIS-CAT members
European-NACSIS project
和漢古書に関する取扱い及び解説(NII)
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