November 19 (sat.) Keynote Speech 1

Makoto Nagao/President, National Diet Library (NDL)

The National Diet Library’s Efforts on Creating a Digital Library

      The National Diet Library, or NDL, is the only national library in Japan. Under the Legal Deposit System, all books published in Japan are collected, stored, and made available for use. While our first priority is to assist the National Diet, we also provide a wide variety of services to the general public. There are approximately 37.5 million items in the NDL collection. These include roughly 9.7 million books and 9.7 million magazine volumes, as well as newspapers, Japanese classics, microfilm, records, and more.

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November 19 (sat.) Invited Speech 1

Kinda Akihiro（President, National Institutes for Humanities）

NIHU’s Project to Promote Resource Sharing

      Digital technology has become both an integral tool and method for the humanities, not least because of the convenience gained from digitalizing resources. In particular, the digitalization of extremely rare documents – especially materials such as old maps that vary in shape and form, making them difficult to view, store, and organize – has proven invaluable for research and education.

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November 19 (sat.) Keynote Speech 2

Simon C. Lin /Principle Investigator (PI) of International Collaboration and Promotion of Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Project, TELDAP

From Digital Archives to Digital Humanities

      Taiwan, with the population of 23 million and more than 46,000 species of flora and fauna, is a country featured cultural diversity as well as biodiversity [1]. From the cultural diversity perspective, one could find the fusion of mixed cultures such as traditional Chinese culture, aboriginal culture, Japanese culture, Western culture etc. in Taiwan’s society. From the biodiversity perspective, there are extraordinarily abundant biodiversity resources and many endemic species in Taiwan. Supported by Taiwan National Science Council (NSC), the National Digital Archives Program (NDAP) was officially launched in 2002 in order to digitally archive Taiwan’s unique cultural resources and the rich biodiversity. In the first phase (2002-2007), the NDAP has generated enormous collection for Taiwan Digital Archives with over 3 million items of digitalized content from Anthropology to Zoology. To further increase their use, the NDAP merged with the National e-Learning Program and formed the new Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP) [2] in 2008. In phase II (2008-2012), with an overall budget of US$ 247 million, TELDAP is composed of eight core division projects, they are: Content, Technology, Platform, Applications, Industries, Education, Language Learning and International Collaboration.

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November 20 (sun.) Panel 1: Keynote Speech 3

Joe Earle（Vice-President, and Director, Japan Society Gallery at Japan Society）

Digitization in an Age of Austerity

The Japanese Print Access and Documentation Project (JPADP) digitized and rehoused 53,000 prints in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston between 2005 and 2010 and by 2015 they will be all be available online with substantial metadata in both English and Japanese.

The JPADP started before the economic calamity of fall 2008 and the ongoing global crisis, but its mode of execution can serve as a model for future projects that will be carried out in an age of austerity. If such projects are to enjoy public or private support in future, the resulting assets (images and metadata) need to appeal to the broadest possible public.

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November 20 (sun.) Panel 1: Invited Speakers

Alfred Haft（Project Curator, Japanese Section, Department of Asia British Museum）

Advanced Digital Technology at the British Museum

In October 2007, the British Museum began making its collection database available to the general public through the museum’s website. At that time, anyone accessing the website could learn directly about 257,000 different objects (mostly prints and drawings), around half of which had accompanying images.Since then, with the support of the Information Technology department, and the participation of curators museum-wide, the number of digitally catalogued objects hasincreased nearly eightfold.As a custodian of the past, the museum has embraced the technologies of the present, because these technologies can make the past alive and available to more people worldwidethan ever before: around 5.7 million visitors walked through the doors of the museum in the twelve months from April 2009 to April 2010; visitors traversed the museum’s webportal almost as many times in March of this year alone.
more>>

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November 20 (sun.) Panel 1: Invited Speakers

Kōji Tanabe（Chair, Kyoto Culture Association (NPO)）

The Development of the Kyoto Digital Archives

1. The Past 10 Years of the Kyoto Digital Archive
2. Cooperative Projects with Foreign Museums
3. Applications of High-Resolution Facsimiles of Cultural Assets and Their Future

     I will present on the history of the unique digital archive projects that were initiated by the city of Kyoto and have now been passed on to the Kyoto Culture Association. During the six years that it was led by the city of Kyoto and other organizations such as the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry, The Digital Archive Project established pioneering digital archives beyond what any other local government had accomplished, under its motto, “save, connect, and apply.” The project’s history includes three years of activities by the Kyoto Digital Archive Promotion Association from its establishment in 1998 until its dissolution in 2001, and another three years of activities by the Kyoto Digital Archives Research Center from its establishment in the same year until its dissolution in 2004. The project’s crown jewel achievement is the Digital Archive of the National Treasure, Nijō Castle. Influenced by this project, many for-profit and non-profit organizations started their own unique digital archives, and created new industries and fields. Today, I would like to report on the activities of the Kyoto Culture Association in an effort to “learn” and “teach” about the existence of our cultural inheritance and its value, as well as to discuss these matters with our participants today.

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November 20 (sun.) Panel 2: Invited Speakers

Neil Fraistat / University of Maryland

Digital Humanities Centers and The New Humanities

      What is the function of the digital humanities center within a rapidly changing humanities landscape? Although they have a great capacity for focusing, maximizing, and networking local knowledge, local resources, and local communities of practice, digital humanities centers are also at risk of being silos, overly focused on their home institutions, rarely collaborating with other centers, and unable to address by themselves the larger problems of the field. They also siphon off grant funding from schools unable to afford a digital humanities center of their own and can make it harder for scholars at such places to participate in the larger projects that help to shape the possibilities and future of the field. Are digital humanities centers crucial to the future of the field, or deleterious to it? Or to point the question more finely: in what ways and under what circumstances might digital humanities centers be seen as more crucial to the field than deleterious? I’ll be discussing these issues especially in terms of the centerNet initiative, which seeks to create a truly global network of local digital humanities centers.

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November 20 (sun.) Panel 2: Invited Speakers

Jieh Hsiang / National Taiwan University

Digital Humanities in Asia Pacific – a Progress Report

      Although still in an early stage of development, digital humanities has made tremendous stride in Asia Pacific in recent years. The countries in this region, with their tremendous diversities in culture, language, history, and social and economic structure, have each developed its own unique path to digital humanities.
      At the same time, however, there are issues and challenges that are common to all. In this talk we will give an overview of some of the current activities in Asia Pacific countries.
      We will explore, to the best of our knowledge, their commonalities and differences, and will discuss how to overcome some of the problems together through an international organization such as the CenterNet.

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