2014 IIAI 3rd International Conference on Advanced Applied Informatics

Investigations on Reference Books Heldin Japanese Public Libraries
Nozomi Nomura

Shunsuke AraiKeita Tsuji

College of Knowledge
and Library Sciences,
School of Informatics
s1111539@u.tsukuba.ac.jp

Graduate School of Library,
Information andMedia Studies
syun0201@gmail.com

Faculty of Library,
Information andMedia Sciencekeita@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp

University of Tsukuba
1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba-city, Ibaraki-ken 305-8550, JAPAN

this assumption, we will show which reference books libraries
are lacking despite the book’s importance.

Abstract— In this study, we investigated (1) which reference
books are held in Japanese public libraries, (2) how many times
they are used in reference records in Collaborative Reference
Databases, and (3) which reference books are difficult to find inlibraries, despite their usefulness. The results showed that there
are several reference books which are frequently used inreference records but are not held in many libraries.
Keywords—Reference books; Reference
libraries; Collaborative Reference Databases

I.

services;II.

A. Sample Libraries
There are 47 prefectures and 57 prefectural libraries inJapan. Eight prefectures contain multiple prefectural libraries,and we excluded such libraries from our investigation target(they are Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Fukui,Wakayama, Osaka, and Kagoshima prefectures). We excluded
them due to the possibility that they might be sharing
collections of materials between each prefecture, and eachlibrary is overseeing materials belonging to special fields (forinstance, in Kanagawa prefecture, Kanagawa Prefectural
Library oversees books in the social science and humanities
fields, while Kanagawa Prefectural Kawasaki Library oversees
books in the natural science and engineering fields).
Concerning these libraries, it is difficult to place blame on any
one of them that does not hold particular reference books.
Therefore, we excluded from our sample the libraries in thepreviously mentioned eight prefectures and will leave them for
future research.

PublicINTRODUCTIONĀ Future Libraries 㧙 Toward Information Base which
Supports Local Community 㧙 (Report)” published by theMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology in Japan [1] points out that Japanese public
libraries do not hold enough reference books, which hinders
reference services. However, few studies have been performed
to determine which reference books are actually available atthe library and which are not. Sugie (2007) [2] investigatedfive libraries in the Kanto area to determine which healthscience reference books are being held. Although she studiedreference books, the focus was limited to the health sciencefield. On the other hand, Oba et al. (2012) [3] investigatedwhat books Japanese libraries hold (5,716 pubic and university
libraries), but the investigation was not limited to reference
books, and they investigated only books that were published in
the first half of 2006. As we will show later, many reference
books were published before 2006.

From the remaining 39 prefectural libraries (there is only
one prefectural library per prefecture), we randomly chose 20
libraries. We reduced the number of sample libraries to reduceinvestigation costs.
B. Sample Reference Books
We randomly selected sample reference books from thoselisted in Reference Books as Information Sources: New Edition[6]. Masao Nagasawa, the book’s first author, is a
representative researcher of reference services; the book is very
popular among Japanese librarians. There are several
guidebooks from which to select sample reference books [7];however, we will reserve these options for future research.

Using this knowledge, we investigated what reference
books are being held in Japanese public libraries by using Calil
API [4] and OPAC of libraries. Calil API can perform crosslibrary searches among Japanese public, university, and speciallibraries.
In addition, we investigated reference records in theCollaborative Reference Database [5] (maintained by JapaneseNational Diet Library) and noted how many times our sample
reference books were used in the reference records. We
assumed that the frequency at which a reference book was usedin the records correlates with the book’s importance. Based on

978-1-4799-4173-5/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/IIAI-AAI.2014.23

SAMPLE LIBRARIES AND REFERENCE BOOKS

Reference Books as Information Sources: New Edition
consists of eight chapters; we randomly chose five reference
books from each chapter ranging from chapter 2 to 8. With fivereference books chosen from seven chapters, we ended up with59

short to extract four nouns, we tried all the noun combinationsas search keywords.

35 sample reference books. We excluded chapter 1, because it
did not contain five books that met our criteria (to be explainedlater).

IV.

We limited our selection of sample books to those that haveISBNs (we mention our use of Calil later). In addition, to keep
our investigation simple, we did not choose multi-volume
books with multiple ISBNs. These will all remain for future
research.
III.

THE NUMBER OF TIMES BEING USED IN REFERENCE
RECORDS

Collaborative Reference Database includes reference
records reported by various Japanese libraries, such as public
libraries and university libraries. As of March 19, 2013, 350
libraries are registered. We collected 62,328 reference records
on March 19, 2013, and identified the titles of reference books
used to answer the reference questions. As previously
mentioned, we calculated the frequency at which our sample
reference books were used in the records and noted that thesefrequencies related to the importance or usefulness as reference
books.

HOW TO CHECK WHETHER OR NOT THE LIBRARIESHOLD THE BOOKSWe used the following three methods to examine whichreference books Japanese public libraries held: (1) by ISBN via
Calil API, (2) by ISBN via each library’s OPAC, and (3) bytitles via OPAC. With these three methods, we expect tominimize the error regarding libraries that do not hold thebooks despite the fact that they actually have them. We
conducted these retrievals from April 17, 2014, to April 23,2014.

V.

RESULTS

A. How Many Libraries Hold the Books and How Many
Reference Records Used Them
Table 1 displays the number of libraries that hold thesample reference books and how many times the books wereused in reference records. We can see in Table 1, for instance,that 17 libraries have Rovere French-Japanese Dictionary,published by Shogakkan, and the ratio is 85.0% (=17/20). Inaddition, that book was used three times in the reference
records. Note that all the sample reference books werepublished between 1951 and 2003. Therefore, as we previouslymentioned, the results by Oba et al. (2012) are limited
concerning reference books.

A. Retrieving Books by Calil API based on ISBN
Calil API is a free Web service that can perform crosslibrary searches concerning Japanese public, university, andspecial libraries (As of April 27, 2014, it can search 6,530libraries) [9][10]. Although Calil API is a powerful tool, it only
allows us to search books by ISBN. Therefore, we firstcollected ISBNs of sample reference books by using: (1)OPAC of University of Tsukuba, (2) CiNii Books (maintainedby National Institute of Informatics), and (3) OPAC ofJapanese National Diet Library [11][12][13][14][15]. We thenretrieved the sample reference books by Calil based on theirISBNs. We used Calil because of the reduced retrieval cost. Ifwe retrieve all the books by each library’s OPAC, theinvestigation will be much more labor intensive.

The reference book that was least held in libraries was TheBible, The New Interconfessional Translation Concordance(Shin-Kyodoyaku-Seisyo-Concordance), and the ratio at which
it was held was 20.0%. The second-least-held books were
Encyclopedia of Japanese People and Pandect of Journal inMeiji Era, whose ratios were 60%. Note that the former
Encyclopedia of Japanese People appeared 66 times inreference records, which was the largest amount among sample
reference books. If we assume that the frequency ofappearances in reference records represents a book’s
importance, libraries should consider holding Encyclopedia ofJapanese People. By the same logic, libraries should also
consider holding The Complication of Pandect of the State of aCountry in Showa Era (although it was used 17 times in thereference records-the third-highest frequency-the number oflibraries that hold it remains at 15, or 75.0%).

B. Retrieving Books by OPAC based on ISBN
Unfortunately, Calil sometimes fails to find books.
Therefore, we used each library’s OPAC when Calil reported
that the books were not held in the library. We retrieved
sample reference books by OPAC based on their ISBNs.
C. Retrieving Books by OPAC Based on Titles
Some OPACs do not allow ISBN search, and otherssometimes fail to find books through an ISBN search.
Therefore, we also retrieved books by their titles. Since title
search is more complicated than ISBN search, we will explainin detail below how we retrieved books by their titles.

B. The Number of Holdings in Each Library
Additionally, we investigated how many reference books
our sample libraries hold and displayed these results in Table 2.
We can see in Table 2, for instance, that Hokkaido Prefectural
Library holds 28 reference books, and the ratio is 80.0%(=28/35).

First, we used MeCab, the Japanese morphologicalanalyzer, and decomposed the titles into words and POS-tags.
We then selected the following nine combinations of nouns intitles and used them as search keywords: (1) the first four
nouns, (2) the first three nouns and the last noun, (3) noun andthe last two nouns, (4) the first noun and the last three nouns,(5) the last four nouns similarly, (6) the first three nouns, (7)the first two nouns and the last noun, (8) the first noun and thelast two nouns, and (9) the last three nouns. If the title was too

The highest holding ratio is 97.1%, recorded by Hiroshima
Prefectural Library and Fukuoka Prefectural Library. On theother hand, the lowest ratio is 65.7%, recorded by Okinawa
Prefectural Library. What caused these differences (budgets,60[5] National Diet Library. “Collaborative Reference Database.” CollaborativeReference Database. https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/ (accessed 2014-0502). (text in Japanese)service policies, sample reference books, etc.) will beresearched in the future.
VI.

[6] Nagasawa, Masao; Ishiguro, Yuko. Reference books as information
sources. New edition, Japan Library Association, 2004, p. 245. (text inJapanese)

DISCUSSIONS

From Table 1, we can say that some reference books are
not being held in many libraries although their frequencies ofappearances in reference records are high. If the frequencies ofappearances in records represents the book's importance,
libraries should consider holding these reference books.

[7] For instance, following guidebooks about reference books have been
published: Yoshida, Yuko. Practice of reference service, revised edition,
Benseisyuppan, 2006, p. 146. (text in Japanese)[8] We also could examine reference cases that are registered on Collaborative
Reference Database, and we examined sample reference books that areoften used in the reference records in the database.

However, one problem remains. Although we investigatedthe holding status in prefectural libraries, the above mentioned
frequencies are not limited to those in the reference records
registered (to Collaborative Reference Databases) byprefectural libraries. The reference books whose frequencies
were high might have appeared in the records that wereregistered by the other kinds of libraries such as municipal
libraries. We have to investigate the reference records andclassify the reference books based on the types of libraries thatused them.

[9] Calil. “Library’s Map.” Calil. https://calil.jp/library/ (accessed 2014-0427). (text in Japanese)[10] Yoshimoto, Ryuji. Calili.jp, a new Web service that provides one-stopsearch of Japanese libraries’ collections. Journal of Information Processingand Management. 2012, vol. 55, no. 2, p. 97-105. (text in Japanese)[11] University of Tsukuba Library. “University of Tsukuba Library.”
University of Tsukuba Library. https://www.tulips.tsukuba.ac.jp/lib/ja(accessed 2014-04-28). (text in Japanese)[12] National Institute of Informatics. “CiNii Books-Search for collection inuniversity libraries.” CiNii Books. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/books/ (accessed2014-04-28). (text in Japanese)In this study, we showed that the prefectural libraries did
not hold some reference books. We suspect the other kinds oflibraries such as municipal ones hold less reference books dueto their limited budgets compared to the prefectural libraries.
We have to investigate the other kinds of libraries and clarify
the tendencies.
VII.

[13] National Diet Library. “NDL-OPAC.” National Diet Library.
https://ndlopac.ndl.go.jp (accessed 2014-04-28). (text in Japanese)[14] We collected ISBNs from March 19, 2014, to March 25, 2014.
[15] We collected 2,522 ISBNs.

CONCLUSIONSIn this study, we investigated (1) which reference books areheld in Japanese public libraries, (2) how many times they areused (appear as references) in reference records in
Collaborative Reference Databases, and (3) which reference
books are difficult to find in libraries, despite their usefulness.
Future tasks include (1) increasing sample libraries andsample reference books and making the results more reliable,and (2) determining the causes of observed tendencies. Anotherinteresting direction involves identifying reference books thatare most frequently used in reference records and investigating
whether they are being held in libraries.
REFERENCES[1] Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. ĀFuturelibraries ˉToward information base which supports local community?ˉ
(report). ā Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology.
http://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/286184/www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/18/04/06032701.htm, (accessed 2014-04-27). (text in Japanese).
[2] Sugie, Noriko. Survey of holdings of reference books on health in public
libraries. Libraries Today. 2007, vol. 45, no. 3, p. 165-175. (text inJapanese)[3] Oba, Hiroyuki; Agata, Teru; Ikeuchi, Atsushi; Otani, Yasuharu. Whatbooks libraries contain?: The survey on library holdings in Japan of for all
books published during the first half of 2006. Journal of Japan Society ofLibrary and Information Science. 2012, vol. 58, no. 3, p. 139-154. (text inJapanese)[4] Calil. “Calil | cross-library search site in Japan.” Calil. https://calil.jp/,(accessed 2014-04-28). (text in Japanese).

61

TABLE I.

THE NUMBER OF LIBRARIES WHICH HOLD EACH REFERENCE BOOK AND THE NUMBER OF TIMES OUR SAMPLE REFERENCE BOOKS ARE USED IN THE
REFERENCE RECORDS

Year ofPublication

Chapter

Reference Books' TitlesChapter 2

Dictionary of Difficult Reading of a Kanji
1956
Rovere French㵥Japanese Dictionary Published by Shogakkan
1988
Dictionary of Direct Words in Japan
1951
Dictionary of Synonym
1991
The Bible, The New Interconfessional Translation Concordance
1998
Encyclopedia of Current Law
2000
Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology
1987
Encyclopedia of Agriculture
1987
The World Atlas of Archaeology
1987
Geschichte des Kostüms
2001
Chronological Table of World History
1992
Chronological Table of Japan in the Modern Period
2001
Chronological Table of Natural History in Japan
2002
Chronological Table of Western Music1983
The Complication Pandect of The State of a Country in Showa Era
1991
Encyclopedia of Southeast Asia
1997
Encyclopedia of Akita
1981
Encyclopedia of Hyogo
1983
Times Wrold Map : Live Atlas
1992
World History Atlas
2001
Encyclopedia of Westerner
1995
Encyclopedia of Japanese People
1979
Dictionary of Buddhist Japanese People
1992
Encyclopedia of Musician
2001
Bibliography of Japaense People Who are Relevant to Politics in The Modern Period 1985
Encyclopedia of The World's Masterpiece
1987-89
Encyclopedia of Japanese Scientist in The Modern Period
1986-87
Catalog of Translated Literary Work in Meiji, Taishyo, and Syowa Era
1959
Series of Pandect of Modern Japanese Literary1982Catalog of National Diet Library from 1926 to March, 1949
1960/66Handbook of Japanese Newspaper and Journal
1965-2003
Catalog of Scientific Journal
2001
Pandect of Journal in Meiji Era
1985
Catalog of Oya Soichi Library
1985
Bibliography of The Greater East Asian War
1981

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 862

The Number of
Our Sample
Reference Books
that are Used inThe Reference
Records

The Number ofLibraries thatRatio
Hold Sample
Reference Books

20
171919415
2020
1715
1620
18
1615
18
1315201620
1215201920
171920
20
1920
1220
13

100.0%
85.0%95.0%
95.0%
20.0%
75.0%
100.0%
100.0%
85.0%
75.0%
80.0%
100.0%
90.0%
80.0%
75.0%
90.0%
65.0%
75.0%
100.0%
80.0%
100.0%
60.0%
75.0%
100.0%
95.0%
100.0%
85.0%
95.0%
100.0%
100.0%
95.0%
100.0%
60.0%
100.0%
65.0%

13401451012310171117221266
14206
12200
120140TABLE II.

THE NUMBER OF REFERENCE BOOKS THAT ARE HELD IN EACH LIBRARY

Names of Libraries
Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Total
Hokkaido Prefectural Library
4544353 28(80.0%)
Iwate Prefectural Library
4424353 25(71.4%)
Miyagi Prefectural Library
4445555 32(91.4%)
Fukushima Prefectural Library
5544455 32(91.4%)
Tochigi Prefectural Library
4555554 33(94.3%)
Niigata Prefectural Library
3454554 30(85.7%)
Toyama Prefectural Library
4445455 31(88.6%)
Yamanashi Prefectural Library
4544554 31(88.6%)
Aichi Prefectural Library
4554555 33(94.3%)
Mie Prefectural Library
4553454 30(85.7%)
Nara Prefectural and Information Center
4544545 31(88.6%)
Hyogo Prefectural Library
4355455 31(88.6%)
Hiroshima Prefectural Library
4555555 34(97.1%)
Shimane Prefectural Library
4345453 28(80.0%)
Kagawa Prefectural Library
4352455 28(80.0%)
Ehime Prefectural Library
4444534 28(80.0%)
Fukuoka Prefectural Library
5555554 34(97.1%)
Nagasaki Prefectural Nagasaki Library
3443543 26(74.3%)
Kumamoto Prefectural Library
4544455 31(88.6%)
Okinawa Prefectural Library
3433253 23(65.7%)
Total
7987858286968459963