Archiving cultural and community memories in a networked information society : a Japanese perspective

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONMany projects to develop digital collections of cultural heritage have been carried out worldwide since the explosive growth of the Internet and the Web in the mid-1990s. The author has discussed digital archives and metadata in the context of community memory and cultural resources in previous articles (Sugimoto, 2014; Sugimoto, Mitsuharu, Tetsuya, &Tsunagu, 2015). This paper looks back at specifically Japanese projects involving cultural heritage and community memories and discusses some issues from the author's perspectivewith the intention to provide an overview of Japanese digital library activities more comprehensively.Large digital library projects were carried out in the 1990s. For example, American Memory and Making of America by large research libraries, and the Digital Library Initiatives by the U.S. National Science Foundation and other funding bodies are the most famous projects. American Memory and Making of America developed large collections of historical resources. The Digital Library Initiatives have funded many research projects of different types-information and communication technology (ICT) centric projects, collection-centric projects, and user-centric projects. In Japan, several major digitization projects were started by the National Diet Library (NDL) and major memory institutions. IPA/JIPDEC conducted a comprehensive digital library project in collaboration with the National Diet Library (Mukaiyama, 2000). The National Diet Library started the Kindai Digital Library, a huge digital collection of books published in Japan after the revolution in the 19th century. The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records at the National Archives of Japan started building a digital collection of Japanese governmental records from the revolution in the 19th century to the end of World War II. The museum community has also had major works for building digital collections. Cultural Heritage Online is a collaborative project by the nation-wide museum community under the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government.In Japan, digital archive is commonly used as a term meaning a large collection of digital resources, primarily in the cultural domain. Various types of digital collections have been built as a digital archive-digitized books, digital images of museum resources, 3D images of heritage sites, etc. Libraries, museums, archives and related institutions, referred to as memory institutions, are the key players in building digital archives.There are also digital archives for non-cultural resources. Building digital archives of disaster records is a crucial activity as it not only keeps records of disasters, but also keeps community memories for the future. Many digital archives were created after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on March 11, 2011. Many digital photographs and videos were taken at the disaster by people who witnessed the disaster, and many photographs and other data were created after the disaster to record the disaster itself and recovery from it. There are many non-digital materials which should be archived in addition to born digital resources. Thus, these archives collect both born digital materials as well as digitized materials. The National Diet Library is providing a portal for the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami archives, which is named Hinagiku.Digital archives refer to a collection of digital objects of cultural content which may be born digital or converted into digital, for example photographs, videos, audio records and documents. On the other hand, many databases of cultural resources that have been or are being built provide only metadata of the cultural resources with no primary digital objects. These are not strictly digital archives from the viewpoint of primary digital objects, but this paper also mentions them as the border between digital archives and databases is not crisp, and metadata about cultural resources are a key component of digital archives. …