The social readiness of electronic libraries in Japan

1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09680409
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 情報システム学(含情報図書館学)
• Research Institution: Meisei University (1998); Kyushu Otani Junior College (1997)
• Principal Investigator: NIMURA Ken Meisei University, General Education, Assistant Professor, 一般教育, 助教授 (70237783)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HIRAI Ayumi Meisei University, General Education, Full-time lecturer, 一般教育, 講師 (00254649)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1998
• Keywords: electronic library / electronic journal / academic publishing / academic organization / full text database / machine readable text file / learned society / digital library

Research Abstract

These authors argue that machine readable text files should be easily acquired for electronic libraries before such libraries are established as part of the social system. This investigation follows one made in 1992 by the authors. Academic publishing is regarded as very important because texts from academic organizations will be the major acquisitions for electronic libraries. 4,950 organizations were extracted from all over Japan and sent questionnaires on their periodicals. Responses were received from 1,206 organizations.
Of all papers submitted for those periodicals, more than 80% were written using electronic devices such as word processors or computers. This figure has increased from 75% in 1992. Machine readable text files should be easily supplied by the authors of those papers.
However, it should also be pointed out that electronic libraries will not be esfablished merely by collecting machine readable text files. There is a great deal of resistance among those organizations to the idea of publishing electronically. Even now, 82.6% of those organizations, down from 94.7% in 1992, are negative on that point. They believe that it is unfair to readers who are not familiar with electronic perusal or who lack the equipment. On the other hand, kanji, or chinese characters, are still the problem for the electronic distribution of these journals because of lack of character set on computers.
Thus, academic societies, as the sending site of the information, are not ready for electronic libraries. Their periodicals are key for the electronic libraries because their texts are edited, which means they come out through so called social filters. This will be very important compared with currently popular web publishing. Anyone can easily publish his works using the World Wide Web on the Internet because it has no social filters. The acquisitions of electronic libraries should not be those web publications, but rather texts which have social relevance and authority because they have been through editorial processes.