Research Leader: Yasuhiro TOKUHARA
With the purpose to properly organize and make available for use materials written in various Asian languages, particularly in those of South and West Asia, members of staff in charge of arranging and cataloging collections of libraries at universities and research institutions across the nation in close collaboration with researchers will combine their work to consider and discuss the most appropriate methodology for creating a catalog by language or geographical area that would reflect the peculiarities of the materials in question, compile, based on that methodology, cataloging manuals per each language including Arabic, Persian, and Tibetan, and distribute these manuals among all libraries. At the same time they will also look into technological trends for centralized organization of bibliographic data in a machine-readable catalog of books and periodicals, as well as of metadata of online resources such as electronic books and electronic periodicals, and databases, mainly related to West Asia, in connection with future developments in search and retrieve systems for area studies resources.