National Diet Library’s efforts to build the Great East Japan Earthquake Archive and its current status

The Great East Japan Earthquake, which struck Japan on March 11, 2011, caused extensive damage in several parts of Japan and has affected Japanese society, culture and economy in various ways. Since immediately after the earthquake, the importance of passing on this historical experience to future generations has been pointed out in Japan and overseas. The Japanese government announced its basic policy towards the recovery from the earthquake. This policy pointed out the need to develop a system to collect, preserve and give access to records and lessons of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Based on such a national policy, the National Diet Library (NDL) has been working on the development of “The Great East Japan Earthquake Archive Project” to collect, preserve and give access to the information related to the earthquake for Japan as a whole. In order to promote this project, the NDL drew up “The Great East Japan Earthquake Archive Action Plan” on July 2012. The NDL needs to deal with diversified digital contents such as moving images, sound recordings, SNSs, e-books, e-magazines, fact data, broadcasts etc. in the archive. There are many challenges to overcome, because librarians in general do not have the experience and expertise to collect, organize and preserve these contents. The challenges are not only for the NDL but also for the archive institutions in the world. In this paper, I will introduce the efforts towards the collection and preservation of the records of the Great East Japan Earthquake and discuss challenges and prospects for the future.