U.S. Ambassador to Japan Walter F. Mondale and Japanese Speaker of the House Takako Doi formally opened the Library's Tokyo Acquisitions Facility Sept. 27 in Tokyo.
The purpose of the facility is to collect documents from Japanese government agencies, think tanks, scholars and advisory panels.
"For our two nations to successfully work together on matters of bilateral, regional and global concern, the more information we share, the better," Mr. Mondale said.
The facility, located in the heart of the city's business and government district, was established by the Library and the Japan Foundation's Center for Global Partnership as the acquisition arm of the Japan Documentation Center, located at the Library in Washington. The Japan Foundation is financing the facility through a five-year grant, with a first-year budget of $700,000.
Takao Matsuzawa, former head of the Ueno branch of the National Diet Library, Japan's equivalent of the Library of Congress, leads the staff of three to identify recently published reports and conference proceedings through indexes, listings and major Japanese daily news sources. They then acquire the materials from the appropriate agencies and create bibliographic records with English abstracts. These are sent to the Japan Documentation Center, where the records are entered into a database and the documents scanned and stored on optical disk. The documents are thus easily retrievable for congressional and other researchers. The bibliographic database has been put on the Internet so users can request copies of the documents.
The Japan Documentation Center was established in 1992 in response to a concern expressed by the U.S. Senate during the 1980s that the United States lacked up-to-date information on Japan, especially about progress in science, technology and business.
"With the Washington and Tokyo facilities fully operational, the mission to acquire and disseminate timely information is being successfully carried out," said Ichiko Morita, head of the Japan Documentation Center.
Representing the Library at the opening ceremony were Ms. Morita, Associate Librarian for Collections Services Winston Tabb, former Director for Public Service and Collection Management I Deanna Marcum and Chief of the Order Division Michael Albin. Before the ceremony, about 25 reporters from the Japanese press attended a 45-minute news conference. Some 150 people attended the opening, including representatives of the Japanese government and U.S. Embassy, representatives from Japan's national libraries, information providers and individuals from business and economic associations. The ceremony concluded with the Kampai, a traditional Japanese cheer.