UBC Japanese Library Resources Blog

Today the Emperor and Empress of Japan visited UBC Asian Centre, and we had the opportunity to show them three items from UBC Library’s collection. I have listed the works below, for those who are interested.

Ise monogatari utakaruta, a set of late-Edo uta-garuta (poem cards) that we acquired for the Asian Library just this year.

The following two maps, both from Rare Books and Special Collections’ Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era collection.

Bankoku Sozu (萬國総図), part a and part b

Kanagawa ko oezu (神奈川港大絵図)

Ise Monogatari Utakaruta

Maps

As of today, UBC students and faculty will be able to access Asahi Kikuzo II Visual. This database includes 5.8 million articles in full text from Asahi publications including the Asahi Shinbun newspaper (1945-present), AERA weekly magazine (May 1988-present) and Shukan Asahi weekly magazine.

To link to this resource, please see the information page.

To access from home, you must be logged into your VPN.

TomoeArts will be staging a performance entitled Ten Nights of Dream, based on the 1908 Natsume Sôseki work (夢十夜). The show will feature performer and UBC instructor Colleen Lanki, and the May 22 event will include a talk on Natsume Sôseki by UBC Asian Studies Professor Sharalyn Orbaugh.

Event details:
May 21, 22 & 23
8:30pm (note: Dr. Orbaugh’s lecture @ 7pm, Fri May 22)
Centre A, 2 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

For more on the events, including ticketing information, check out the TomoeArts performances page.

For the month of May, we will be having a trial of Yomiuri Shinbun’s Yomidas Rekishikan ヨミダス歴史館 database. The database is keyword searchable and includes over 10 million articles from the newspaper from 1874 to present.

To access this resource

1. Log on to your VPN
2. Go to the site: https://database.yomiuri.co.jp/rekishikan/

Check out the information page for more details.

Your feedback is essential to determining whether or not we will purchase this database in the future. Please e-mail me and let me know how useful you found the resource.

Please check out the Image Use Protocol website from the National Coordinating Council on Japanese Language Resources (NCC) :
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ncc/imageuse/index.html

The site is specifically designed to help Japanese Studies scholars outside of Japan attain the proper rights to use images in their scholarly publications. This guide provides an overview of Japanese copyright law, as well as templates that can be used to request copyright permission.

The NCC is looking for feedback on the site, and requests that comments be sent to vbestor@fas.harvard.edu by Friday, April 17. The site will go down after this date, but will come back “fully live” by the end of the month.

Starting this month, we will have access to a new version of JapanKnowledge called JapanKnowledge Plus. In addition to having Jitsu 字通 kanji dictionary and all the resources previously accessible through JapanKnowledge, this new version includes the online version of the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten 日本国語大辞典　(or Nikkoku Online). The search interface has also been updated.

If you have JapanKnowledge bookmarked, please note that we now have a new URL for the site:
http://www.jkn21.com/

Alternatively, you can access the database via the information page. Remember that you must be logged onto your VPN in order to use the database.

Finally, separate access to Jitsu has been discontinued. You must therefore log onto JapanKnowledge in order to access this resource.

CiNii has a new search interface. If you have the site bookmarked, ensure that you are using the following url:
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/

Thanks to the efforts of the Library Systems Department, the Asian Library has a new Japanese-language CD/DVD-Rom station. CD-Roms currently in the collection include Heian jidaishi jiten (平安時代史事典) and Konjaku mojikyo (今昔文字鏡). The station is located on the main floor of the library, and is capable of playing Region 2 DVDs, for those who would like to view Asian Library’s Region 2 movies (released in Japan).

Here are some of our new titles for the month of November.

Art
Ukiyoe daijiten (浮世絵大事典)

Shashin kiroku Nihon kokokushi (写真記録日本広告史)

Senso to hyosho/bijutsu 20-seiki igo (戦争と表象/美術 : 20世紀以後)

History
“Shinsen” oie sodo (「新選」御家騒動)

Shashin kiroku Nihon bunkashi (写真記録日本文化史)

Nihon kinsei seikatsu ebiki (日本近世生活絵引)

Language & Literature
A dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar (日本語文法辞典 上級編)

Meiji josei bungakuron (明治女性文学論)

Manga
Gendai manga no bokenshatachi (現代マンガの冒険者たち)

Social Sciences
Nihon joseishi sosho Meiji Taishoki (日本女性史叢書 明治大正期)

Bunken senshu kindai Nihon no reigi saho (文献選集近代日本の礼儀作法)

We are conducting a trial of Nikkoku Online, the online version of the Nihon kokugo daijiten 日本国語大辞典.

To access:
– go to the information page: link
– click “via the Web”
– click on ログイン once in the site itself.

Trial ends December 20, 2008.

Please remember to fill out the survey found on the information page so that we can determine whether or not to acquire this resource.