No. 111 Journal of East Asian Libraries

              BRIDGING SHORES:
THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE AREA STUDIES LIBRARIAN*
Izumi Koide International House of Japan
It is my honor to speak to my fellow librarians and faculty
members this afternoon, to think about the meaning of changes
occurring in our profession, and to seek a favorable future
direction. I am particularly pleased to give a talk entitled
" Bridging Shores" here, as Hawaii has long played an important
role in bridging East and West. I am the head librarian of the
International House of Japan in Tokyo. While some of you are
frequent visitors to our library, others of you may not know the
International House. Hence, in order to provide a background to
my views, I should like first to introduce our Library.
. . e International House of Japan Library and Japanese Studies
The International House of Japan is a private, nonprofit
organization incorporated in 1952 for the purpose of promoting
cultural exchange and intellectual cooperation between the
peoples of Japan and other countries. The I House Library
maintains a 20,000- volume collection of English- language books on
Japan and international relations that is particularly strong in
the social sciences and humanities. Our 450- title periodical
collection includes all basic Japan- related English- language
journals plus several important academic journals in the social
sciences and humanities. Most of the patrons of the library are
people in academia who either teach about Japan or are doing
Japan- related research for doctoral degrees in universities all
over the world.
East Asian libraries in North America and the I House Library are
closely linked because we provide services to the same clientele.
We often find that researchers from Columbia University, for
example, come to us and ask reference questions which were
unfinished at Columbia. Or, we tell our users where in the
United States they can find particular Japanese journals.
* This paper was originally presented April 11, 1996, at the
    Workshop on the Global Information Infrastructure for Asian
Studies," Third Session--" Electronic Resources and Information
Services, Part 2" in Honolulu, Hawaii.
1
While both East Asian libraries in North America and the I House
Library belong to a common arena, i. e. Japanese studies, our
collections occupy opposite sides of it. This difference is
caused by the dissimilarity of the languages of materials we
collect. In contrast to East Asian libraries in North America,
which collect books and materials in the Japanese language, the I
House library collection is devoted to English- language
literature on Japan. This has two important implications, one
stemming from the function of language in area studies, and the
other from the function of a local collection in its environment.
Let us consider here the relationship between the process of
research and the language used in area studies. The process of
research moves in a developmental spiral which begins with
exploring sources and secondary works, goes on to make an
original survey, observations, and analysis, records the outcome,
and starts again with this recorded outcome being used as a
secondary work. Looking at the research process in area studies
in terms of the language used for each stage, the vernacular is
the language of source materials, while English is that of the
secondary works. Although an increasing number of source
materials such as Japanese government documents and historical
documents are being translated into English and published, their
quality and quantity are still limited. Whether researchers
depend on documentary records or contemporary interviews and
observations, serious students in area studies must have a
command of the vernacular language in order to approach the
research subject and to gather data. On the other hand, they
usually make the results of their research public in the English
language because they belong to the academic community of the
West where scholarly communication between researchers is
generally conducted in the English language. Consequently, a
knowledge base of area studies in English consisting largely of
secondary sources is formed and accumulated.
To summarize: East Asian libraries in North America basically
accumulate source materials; the I House Library collects
research outcomes ( secondary literature). We thus support
Japanese studies from opposite ends, i. e. from their origin and
their destination.
Regarding the second implication ( the function of a collection in
its local environment), our relation is opposite but similar: an
East Asian library in North America is an East Asian- language
collection in an English- language environment, whereas the I
House Library is an English- language collection in a Japanese
context. Its local collection in the English language is located
in Tokyo where we have access to other Japanese language
collections. This enables the I House Library to function as a
gateway to Japanese language sources.
. . .
Recent Changes in Japan- e Studies and Its Envlranment
Area studies are tightly bound by the history of international
relations and by the place which the studied area occupies in
world politics and the world economy. In that sense each area
studies is unique, and too much generalization about
developmental stages in area studies is inappropriate. I
believe, however, it is meaningful to describe some
characteristics of changes that have occurred in Japanese studies
in order to consider area studies in broader terms, particularly
their past, present and future course.
Recently Japanese studies has experienced a fundamental change.
At a 1992 symposium on " Japanese Studies in the United States"
held by the I House, Professor Patricia Steinhoff of the
University of Hawaii characterized this change as     the loss of
irrelevance." l By this phrase she meant that American Japanese
specialists have been pushed out of their cozy, distant corner of
traditional Japanese studies into the academic mainstream. This
phenomenon has had a profound influence on the academic structure
of Japanese studies, on its economics, politics, and popularity.
I would like to consider some characteristics of present Japanese
studies in North America which I think particularly affect
resources for research. The first is the tension between area
studies and disciplines. In many American universities ( this is
not the case in Australia and Great Britain), professors belong
to departments which are usually divided by discipline, such as
history, fine arts, political science, or economics. Courses in
Japanese studies, however, are often provided by entities like
centers for Japanese studies, institutes for Japanese studies,
and Japanese studies programs, which represent interdisciplinary
activities in Japanese studies in various parts of the
university. According to Professor Steinhoff, when Japanese
studies gravitate toward the particular discipline, it brings
changes in subject, theory, and publication of research in
Japanese studies in the U. S.*
The second characteristic of present Japanese studies in North
America is the increased need for research into contemporary
Japanese society. Japan's growing presence on the international
political and economic scene has generated interest among the
general public in Japanese business and society. Japan is
reported on in newspapers, TV, and other media every day.
Japanese studies serves as a knowledge base on Japan and is
expected to provide explanations. This tendency, particularly
strong in the social sciences, intensifies the demand for current
information on and from Japan.
Thirdly, new groups of consumers of Japanese studies have
emerged, partly because of the mainstreaming of Japanese studies,
and partly.. owing to the international presence of Japan. People
3
hitherto indifferent to Japanese studies and without specialized
language skills have become interested in Japan. Scholars in
various disciplines want to do comparative studies, and
researchers outside of academia want to learn about Japan for
doing business or negotiating with Japan. This, on the one hand,
accelerates the need for English- language materials on Japan,
and, on the other hand, broadens the topics of Japan studies
beyond the scope of traditional area studies.
Lastly, recent developments in information technology and
communications have had a vast impact on Japanese studies, as
they have had on all academic endeavor. We can see complicated
effects in area studies stemming from the gap in the digital
environments of the studied area and of the home society of the
researcher. What is common and available in electronic formats
in North America is not always so in Japan, and this difference
often induces frustration among researchers.
As the East Asian libraries in North America and the I House
Library are located on the opposite shores of area studies,
observations made at the I House Library may serve as a mirror
reflecting the changing situation of the field. Besides its
services to North Americans, the I House Library provides
services to scholars from other parts of the world, and this
enables me to grasp American distinctiveness compared to other
countries. I will focus on four aspects here.
( 1) Changing Publications
I can observe a gravitation toward disciplines in terms of
library resources when looking at our journal collection. Our
selection of journal titles inclusive of those in the disciplines
often receives favorable comments from our users, who say that it
reflects general American academic trends. This is a clear
example showing that the American Japanese studies are more
intertwined in disciplines than those of, for example, Europe.
Since we collect books of " research outcomes," ( secondary
studies), the varying speed of growth in shelf space shows
research trends in Japanese studies. In the 1980s the shelf
space for economics and industry grew very fast; in the early
1990s the science section grew substantially owing to an increase
of such books as R & D in Japan. From the topics of reference
questions we receive, and by participating in seminars and
conferences in Japanese studies, we learn what fields will come
to the fore in the near future, and make efforts to anticipate
user needs and collect materials relevant to them.
( 2) Need for More Gateways
North America has been the most productive area of the world in
4
Japanese studies for a few decades, but recently an increasing
number of books on Japan have been published in Europe. In terms
of the I House library budget, the amount spent on English-language
books on Japan from Europe has grown to be almost
equivalent to the amount spent on books from North America.
American scholars often complain that it is hard to find British
publications on Japan in their university libraries in America
and express appreciation of our collection in this respect. The
I House Library is a meeting place for American and European
Japanese studies publications and their authors.
In addition to making available English- language publications on
Japan, the I House Library also functions as a gateway for
Japanese language materials. We have introduced several online
databases at the library. One of these is Nikkei Telecom in both
its Japanese and English language versions. Because our
collection concentrates on English- language materials, we
expected that the English version of Nikkei Telecom would be most
in demand by our users. However, the requests received have been
mostly for the Japanese- language newspapers on the database. I
concluded that users expect us to be a gateway to Japanese-language
materials. This is confirmed by the growing number of
requests for interlibrary loans of Japanese- language materials.
( 3) Creating New Repositories
We receive an increasing number of requests for access to
contemporary information and to the so- called gray literature.
To satisfy these requests our staff heavily relies on human
networks with other special librarians in Japan. We cannot
confine ourselves to area studies, nor even to the traditional
domain of libraries, if we hope to provide full information to
our users.
Many of you are familiar with the Japan Documentation Center of
the Library of Congress, on which Ms. Ichiko Morita reported
earlier today. During the period leading up to the Center's
establishment, a former librarian of I House, Mrs. Tamiyo
Togasaki, was on the committee for making the feasibility study
and was active in working to improve the information flow from
Japan. In Japan it still requires laborious effort to collect
gray literature, even that published by governmental bodies. The
Gray Literature Detective Group of the Japan Special Libraries
Association, of which I am a member, has been active in studying
the situation, sharing experiences, and seeking improvement.
These activities lead us out of the domain of the library toward
broader issues including publishing and information policy.
Just as government documents are an important part of the gray
literature in the social sciences, art exhibition catalogs are a
type of gray literature in the humanities. A patron came to me
one day and, complained about the fugitiveness of exhibition
5
catalogs of modern Japanese art. We discussed a desirable
resolution to the problem and thought of creating a depository of
catalogs. We have had to wait, however, for ACE Japan to take up
the idea and to move toward realization of this conceived
depository. It took a few years for us to find a proper home for
the project, but it is very nice to see that the seed is growing
thanks to the cooperation of many colleagues. In this case also
networking -- what I call bridging-- is, I think, a key factor in
the actualization of the project.
( 4) Electronic Resources
The introduction of databases and electronic resources to the
library world has caused significant changes in the attitudes of
researchers. Especially relevant here are users' expectations of
electronic resources. Computers are often regarded as almighty;
databases are thought to be available everywhere; they are
expected to have all the necessary data in them, and to be
retrievable in the wanted ways. These expectations may be
realized in some fields but not necessarily in others.
Furthermore the gap between the availability of resources in
electronic form in North America and in Japan is unexpectedly
wide. I am not talking here about the availability of Japanese
electronic resources outside of Japan, but in Japan itself. Even
in Japan, the availability of Japanese electronic resources is
still limited: limited in terms of data, appropriate search keys,
and the range of material included. Given these limitations, in
order to serve our users well, we librarians must know what is
available in what format and the characteristics of each tool,
including scope, precision, accuracy, and limits.
There is one issue I am particular concerned about in regard to
Japanese electronic resources, which currently lies unnoticed,
hidden by the conspicuous issue of hardware/ software. That issue
is the weakness in subject access to information. Providing
subject access has never been a strong point of the Japanese, for
subject catalogs have not been common in Japanese libraries.
Possibly the pioneers in modern Japanese librarianship thought
that the need for subject access would be satisfied by a
classified shelflist. This may have been adequate in the days
when the amount of material was not overwhelming. Today,
however, researchers, particularly those from North America, rely
heavily on subject access in seeking information.
Unlike printed media, electronic materials require special
attention to the means of access, because the information content
is invisible, and yet must always be retrievable. As the unit of
information sought becomes smaller, from the subject of an entire
book to a discrete piece of information contained somewhere
within a publication, we need more sophisticated subject access
mechanisms. To make an effective subject search, some kind of
means is necessary to control terminology, be it thesaurus,
6
.,
dictionary, or classification scheme. Many producers of Japanese
electronic information resources are unaware of this, possibly
because of a weakness in subject access embedded in the
information infrastructure in Japan. Hence, they regard such a
small improvement in access as the capability of searching every
word in a title as satisfactory, and excuse themselves from
developing subject analysis by saying it is too expensive.
Because of this lack of subject search capability, Japanese
information resources generally require more background knowledge
from the user to make effective use of them than do their
American counterparts, which are usually user- friendly, and which
are supported by a long tradition of indexing. This difference
in database structure can create frustration when American
researchers, having different expectations, use Japanese
electronic resources.
It has been the responsibility of librarians for a long time to
organize materials for the efficient use of the information in
them. That is still so even when the media have been changing.
Cataloging and indexing produce an intellectual infrastructure to
prepare for use of information and to provide bridges between
resources and their users. How we can contribute to enhancing
the quality of the information infrastructure of electronic
resources? Refined search mechanisms are indispensable when we
think about guiding our users to the information they need.
Shores
Basically area studies have the innate premise of being
international studies: scholars examine societies/ countries/ areas
foreign to themselves. That is an intellectual endeavor to
bridge different shores. Changes occurring in area studies,
particularly East Asian studies, and in their environments drive
area studies librarians beyond their traditional territory. We
need to expand the scope of our collections in terms of subject,
format, and language. Cooperation and networking should be
sought internationally: area studies done by other countries
should be consulted, and foreign and indigenous studies of the
area examined. Issues in domains outside the library, such as
the publishing and software industries, may need to be settled
before problems in the library can be solved. Even within the
traditional library world, we need more bridges-- for example,
between cataloging and reference and information services, and
between the East Asian collection and information services to
potential users.
Because of the innate international nature of area studies, I
believe we are destined to cross such boundaries as language,
discipline, profession, geography, and divisions within the
library, and to bridge various domains and shores in order to
support, improve and encourage international scholarship.
7
1. Patricia G. Steinhoff, " Japanese Studies in the United
States: The Loss of Irrelevance." IHJ Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 1,
Winter 1993, p. 1.
2. Steinhoff, p. 8
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