Kamakura Public Library

Kamakura Shi Chuo Toshokan
Kamakura-shi
Onari Chu 20-35
Kamakura

Tuesday a.m. 20.08.1996

Interview:

Tetsuo Tsubouchi, Head Librarian

Wendy Wyver, Interpreter

The main public library is in a central location in Kamakura, housed in a library building constructed in 1974. The structure of the library system also includes five branches.

The municipal library is the oldest in Kamakura Prefecture, established 1912, in the fourty-fourth year of the Meji-period. The first library building collapsed during the big earthquake in 1923.

In the Kamakura district served by the library there are 170.000 inhabitants. Anyone living, studying or working in Kamakura is entitled to borrow material from the public libraries.

Among the library users we find a considerable amount of foreigners, and the main library has designed a special 'Foreigners corner' with fiction and reference tools in English language. Also international government publications and pamphlets received from embassies are included in the collection.

The Kamakura public library system has a total of 360.000 books in the collection, of these 208.000 books are located in the main library. The collection also includes a considerable amount of very frequently used compactdiscs and videos.

One may borrow up to a total of six books and three pieces of av-material (compactdiscs, videos etc.) for up to three weeks. Magazines may be borrowed for one week only.

The libraries are closed on Mondays, on the last day of the month and on national holidays. Outside the ordinary opening hours, library books may be returned at the book post outside the library, whereas av-materials are only returned properly at the library counter.

• 1989 May Photocopying is offered

• 1991 March The library joins the KL Net - Kanagawa Library Information Network.

• 1993 April Preparation for computerization project was started

• 1995 July Online computer systems were implemented in all public libraries in Kamakura city. (1).

A LMS network has been implemented in 1995 to connect all public libraries in the city of Kamakura. The opac has replaced the former card catalogue, covering the book collection at main library level only. If the material was not in the card catalogue, it was formerly retrieved by time consuming fax procedures to other library units. The network makes it possible for the users to do their IR in the total library collection and - as also circulation control is included in the LMS - to check whether or not the material has been taken out. Inter-library-service will bring the requested material to the branch chosen by the user.

Opacs are placed in open carrels for standing use, and the man-machine interface is based on fingertouch screens with Japanese characters. The IR can be performed in various modes and subdatabases for adults and children.

The funding from local municipality has made the planning of the IT-network and its implementation to a fairly slow process starting already in the mid-1980'es, and the library has not implemented any IT prior to the network of 1995.

Also a network on prefectural level has been implemented covering all Kamakura prefecturate. This network is not accessible for users but for library staff only and makes it possible to perform IR and ordering of books in all library resources within the prefecture.

Cd-rom is for the time being used for IR in the national bibliography on cd-rom produced by the National Diet Library in Tokyo. This IR-tool is for library staff only.

Access to Internet has been implemented in September 1996. In the initial phase the use of Internet resources are available only for staff members, while library users will have to wait some time for Internet-access from the library.

Future plans for IT includes the design of local databases for factual information and fulltext and the setting up a collection of multimedia cd-rom. Also remote access to opac and library resources will be implemented in due time.

• Kamakura public libraries use computers for processing of user registration, circulation, requests from users. We pay attention not to intrude on each user's privacy and personal data in these ways:
  
• The record of circulation will be deleted when the materials are returned. No circulation record will remain after that.
  
• Information related to users is used only for library services. It is processed only in the library's information system and can not go outside the library.
  
• We always pay all attention to the protection of each user's privacy" (2).

The library staff is thirty-one for total library system, including main library and five branches. For the main library exclusively the staff is fifteen professional librarians and three clerical staff members. Most library duties are performed by multi-functional professional librarians. The level of staff at the Kamakura public library is above the average on national level in Japan, partly due to the economic level in the Kamakura Prefecture, being among the highest in Japan.

References:

(1) Outline of Kamakura Public Library. Published by Kamakura Main Library, June 1996. 19 pages. [In Japanese].

(2) Kamakura Public Library: User Guide. 10 pages. [In Japanese].

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