March 7, 1994

Contact: Barbara Bryant(202) 707-9197

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Ichiko Morita Named Director of the Library of Congress's Japan Documentation Center

On March 7, Ichiko Morita became the first director of the Library of Congress's Japan Documentation Center.

For the past decade, Ms. Morita has served as professor and head of the Cataloging Department at Ohio State University. Previously, she served as instructor in Japanese at the University of Oregon. A graduate of Okayama University in Japan, she received her master's degree in library science from the University of Chicago.

The Japan Documentation Center, located in the Library's Asian Division, was established in 1992 in response to a congressional directive to enhance Asian collections in order to keep Congress well informed. The center is focusing on the acquisition of hard-to-find reports, and other documents issued by the Japanese government, think tanks and private research centers on political, economic, legal and policy issues. Once obtained, the Library will make these documents available to Congress, the executive branch, industrial research centers and other users throughout the nation.

The center's operations are funded in large part the Center for Global Partnership of the Japan Foundation.

Ms. Morita's research interests have focused on Japanese "gray literature," the kind of material the Japan Documentation Center is designed to collect and distribute. She conducted research on this topic in Japan on a grant from the U.S. government and has published articles in both Japanese and English, including "Japanese Technical Information: Its infrastructure" for the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Ms. Morita will direct the center's operations both at the Library of Congress and at its Tokyo Acquisitions Facility in Japan.

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PR 94-039
2/17/94
ISSN 0731-3527