Books on the Red List in Japanese Public Libraries
Keita Tsujia* and Yuhiro Mizunumaba
Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba,
1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba-city, Ibaraki, 305-0821, Japanb
Faculty of Media and Information Resources, Surugadai University,
698 Azu, Hanno-city, Saitama, 357-8555, Japan*Corresponding Author: keita@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp
ABSTRACT
By using (1) search records in Calil.JP (i.e., a free online service that enables federated
searching in online public access catalogs [OPACs] in Japan), (2) OPACs of Japanesepublic libraries, (3) the OPAC of the National Diet Library ([NDL] i.e., a legal deposit
library), and (4) CiNii Books, etc., we found 21 Japanese books that are held by only asmall number of public libraries. These are likely the “last copies,” as they are not heldby the NDL or university libraries too. They may be regarded as books on the Red List.
However, most of them were published after 1990 by popular publishers and are nothistorical rare books. Therefore, it is highly probable that their rarity or scarcity are notproperly recognized by the librarians and thus are not under special protection. Thesearch records in Calil.JP indicated that they were searched in many public libraries
and, in that sense, there is a strong need or demand for them. Public libraries shouldfind such Red Listed books in the collection and pay special attention to them. Whenthey have to weed such books, they should donate them to the NDL.
Keywords: Weeding, public libraries, National Diet Library, legal deposit, Calil.JP
1. Introduction
In this paper, we examine Japanese books that are only held by a small number ofJapanese public libraries, which are likely the “last copies,” as neither the NDL nor
Japanese university libraries have copies. They may be regarded as books on the RedList.
We assume that every book is part of a precious cultural heritage and therefore, allkinds of libraries should cooperate to provide them. According to this position, if a bookis held by only one public library, but not by any other libraries in the country,1 it should
not be weeded from the collection. If the library must weed it (e.g., space limitation), it
should donate the book to a legal deposit library, which holds all the books publishedin that country. In Japan, some books are not held by the NDL or university libraries,
We restrict “all the libraries” to those in one country. We leave it for future research to deal with all
the libraries in multiple countries or all on earth.
1but rather, they are held in public libraries. This paper contributes to the literature bypresenting the results of concrete quantitative research concerning books that are solely
held by Japanese public libraries.
2. Related Studies
There is only a small number of studies that have conducted quantitative research on
the “last copies” of books. Furthermore, we have not found any literature thatrecommends donating these books to a legal deposit library. Kisling et al. (2000)
pointed out that there was a lack of “last copy policies” among academic libraries andproposed “a regional cooperative depository for the last copy of English language titles
held at the region’s academic/research libraries.” However, no quantitative data waspresented.
A taskforce on the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) proposed
the establishment of archival repositories that would retain a “last, best copy” ofAmerican imprints (Nichols and Smith 2001). They recommended the cooperativecollection, storage, and management of information resources by utilizing multiple
libraries. To implement these recommendations by the CLIR taskforce, Reilly andDesRosiers (2003) examined shared repositories: the Northern Regional LibraryFacility (NRLF; one of California’s two state-funded regional repositories), theSouthern Regional Library Facility (SRLF; the second of California’s two regionalrepositories), the Five-College Library Depository (a repository that served four liberalarts colleges and Amherst’s University of Massachusetts. Please note that we use‘repositories’ interchangeably with ‘depositories’), CONStor (a repository that wasformed under the aegis of the Five Colleges of Ohio, Inc.), Washington Research
Libraries Consortium (WRLC; a repository for eight institutions), Research Collections
Access and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP; a repository for Columbia University,
the New York Public Library, and Princeton University), as well as Southwest Ohio
Regional Depository (SWORD; a repository for the University of Miami, Wright State
University, the University of Cincinnati, and Central State University). Reilly andDesRosiers (2003) stated the importance of collecting and preserving these “last copy”
imprints, or “items that are rare and possibly unique.”Connaway et al. (2006) showed that the WorldCat contained 24 million records foritems held by only a single Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) member library.
More precisely, as of January 1, 2005, WorldCat found 54 million bibliographic records,indicating holdings at more than 953 million library locations. 24 million (i.e., 44%) of
these bibliographic records represent items that are held by a single library. Connaway
et al. (2006) examined the materials held exclusively by Vanderbilt University Libraries.
Among those materials, Connaway et al. (2006) pointed out that manuscripts werereadily identifiable and most libraries are very aware of the uniqueness of theirmanuscripts. In that sense, manuscripts are “only copies” rather than the “last copies.”
Connaway et al. (2006) distinguished work, expression, and manifestation based on
the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model. In this model,
a work is considered an abstract concept that the creator wants to convey. When thework becomes realized, it becomes an expression. Then, after this expression ispublished, it becomes a manifestation of the work. Using FRBR concepts, Connaway
et al. (2006) extended the “last copy” concept to define a “last expression,” which
represents the last known manifestation of the expression (i.e., the only remaining copyof specific intellectual or artistic content).
O’Connor and Jilovsky (2009) outlined some issues and approaches regarding thepreservation of last copy materials in academic libraries. Soma and Sjoberg (2011)
reported a weeding project in Concordia College’s Carl B. Ylvisaker Library. Theweeding criteria was primarily based on circulation data as well as the usefulness anduniqueness of the books. The rare titles, which fewer than five libraries ownedworldwide, were retained unless they were no longer useful. Gillies and Stephenson(2012) reported the collaborative weeding projects among the University of Waterloo,Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Guelph (Tri-University Group ofLibraries [TUG]). They described how the “TUG Preservation of Last Copy Agreement”
was developed and how specific weeding projects (e.g., monographs deduplication, theweeding of STM journals, and a JSTOR journal’s last copy project) were conducted.
Lynd (2015) introduced how to carry out weeding in academic libraries and emphasized
donating (rather than discarding) books to organizations, such as Better World Books,
Books for Africa, and Book Aid. However, a legal depository was not included in her
list of organizations. Also, there was no quantitative data presented. Busch et al. (2019)
reported the weeding of the engineering collection at the University of Tennessee’s
Martin’s Paul Meek Library. In this process, the student workers used WorldCatFirstSearch to see how many other libraries owned the books that were candidates forremoval. They adopted weeding criteria, which included keeping titles that were heldby fewer than ten libraries worldwide or fewer than four libraries within the state ofTennessee.
Regarding Japanese libraries, Hori (2015) reported on the current cooperative
preservation efforts by Japanese public libraries, especially Tama Deposit Library.
Yoshimoto (2015) also mentioned this endeavor, and Saito (2015) reported that publiclibraries in the Tama area held approximately 320,000 books that were “last one or twocopies.” Yoshii (2019) clarified the characteristics of the books weeded by the Edogawa
City Library and their weeding procedure.

3. Method
As of April 1, 2018, there are 1,380 local governments (in prefectures, cities, special
wards, towns, and villages) with public libraries in Japan (Japan Library Association2019). Some local governments have multiple public libraries, so there are a total of
3,277 libraries. Most of these local governments provide OPACs that can search theentire collections of their public libraries (i.e., library systems).
Calil.JP is a free online service that enables the federated searching, marshaling,
and integration of the abovementioned OPACs (Yoshimoto 2012, 2015). They arerecording which books in which libraries were when searched by ISBN. In this study,
the search results are formally represented as Rilt, where i, l, and t represent ISBN,library system, and the time of the search, respectively. Rilt can have two values: “1”
when the book was held by that library system, and “0” when it was not held. It is
important to note that Calil.JP does not have R for all the combinations of ISBNs andlibrary systems, but only for those that were searched by the Calil.JP users. For example,
it does not have R for books that have never been searched.
We purchased the abovementioned search results, which were recorded from
December 1, 2014, to September 24, 2019. However, due to a limited budget, only themost recent data for each combination of ISBNs and library systems were purchased.
For example, if a book with ISBN X was searched in library system Y on January 1,2015, 2017, and 2019, only the search result RXY for January 1, 2019, was purchased.
The total number of records purchased for this study was 561,574,537.
In the data from Calil.JP, we identified 8,513 books that were searched in 1,000 or
more library systems (i.e., popular books or books that were in high demand) and only
one library system held. 2 By submitting the ISBNs of these books into the NDL’s
OpenSearch (from October 13–14, 2019), we identified 1,654 books that were not heldby the NDL. Among these, there were 52 books with ISBNs that began with “4”(meaning that they are in Japanese). Then, we manually searched these books by title
in the NDL’s OPAC to ensure that they were not held. Next, we manually searched themby their ISBNs and titles in CiNii Books, which was able to search the entire collectionof the Japanese university libraries.
4. Results and Discussion
Among the abovementioned 52 books, 27 were held by the NDL (i.e., ISBNs were not2

As we previously mentioned, there are 1,380 public library systems in Japan, as of April 1, 2018. We
identified books that were searched in 1,000 or more library systems and that were held by only onelibrary. Therefore, the books we identified may also be held in other library systems than theabovementioned 1,000 or more systems. In the worst case, 380 library systems may also hold them,which is why we avoided calling them “last copies” (as other studies had). Instead, we called them“books that were held only by a small number of public libraries.” We leave it for future researchers tosearch each book in the OPACs of the remaining library systems.

included in their bibliographies and thus were not found by the ISBN search). Among
the remaining 25 (=52−27) books, 21 were not found in CiNii Books, which means thatthey were not held by Japanese university libraries.
Table 1 shows the abovementioned 21 books that were held by public libraries, but
not by the NDL or university libraries. In Table 1, “NDC” represents Nippon DecimalClassification. Among these 21 books, about 43% (nine books) had NDC class “7”which represents “Arts.” We can see in “Note” column that four books are musicalscores. Similarly, two books include CDs or cassette tapes (“Audio”). These music oraudio related books may tend to be Red Listed books. Another two are “mooks” (whichare physically similar to magazines but are intended to be dealt with as books) andcomics.
We can see in “Year” column that 18 books out of 21 were published in and after
1990. Many of their publishers are popular in Japan. They are not historical rare books.
Therefore, it is highly probable that these books’ rarity or scarcity are not properly
recognized by the librarians and thus are not under special protection. As we previously
mentioned, these books were searched via Calil.JP in 1,000 or more library systems. In
that sense, there is a strong need or demand for them although they are not held by
many libraries. Public libraries should find these books in the collection and pay special
attention to them. Because NDL should hold all the books published in Japan, public
libraries should donate the abovementioned Red Listed books to the NDL when they
have to weed the books.
Table 1. Books held by public libraries that were not held by the NDL or university
librariesISBNNDC

Note4636819977 Aichi_Toyota

Local Government Name Type of L. G.
City763Score

4884753003 Hiroshima_Kure4048713825 Hiroshima_Onomichi

CityCity

748
911

4860676912 Hokkaido_Kamikawa

Town

499

4046026278 Kumamoto_Yamaga

City8104117002015 Miyagi
426901010X Miyazaki

Prefecture
Prefecture－
933

Score

4257200308 Niigata_Sanjo

City－

Audio

4871889262 Okinawa_Itoman

City－

Audio

4046009292 Osaka_Higashiosaka

City1884420137282 Shiga_Higashiomi
4901250523 Shiga_Otsu

CityCity

726
913

Comic

4636859847 Shiga_Otsu

City763

Mook4991042402 Tokyo_Bunkyo

Special ward

673

463674246X Tokyo_KatsushikaSpecial ward

763

Score

4636830199 Tokyo_Meguro

Special ward

767

Score

4939138933 Tokyo_Meguro

Special ward

705

4907319134 Tokyo_Nerima

Special ward

494

4860521250 Tokyo_Shinjuku

Special ward

726

4924727059 Toyama_Kurobe

City3764812451108 Wakayama_Aridagawa

Town

726

Mook

Comic

Title
Publisher
ピアノソロ 中上級 華麗なるピアニスト：ステージを彩YMMる豪華アレンジ~クラシックセクション
ひとえ―大竹一重写真集
竹書房
赤い魚―津久井紀代句集
角川書店
ハーブ生活 2019 spring (CHIKYU-MARU MOOK 自地球丸
然暮らしの本)センター試験国語古文・漢文の点数が面白いほどとKADOKAWAれる本 改訂版
二声聴音351 専門コースへの必須
全音楽譜出版社
アリスの地下の冒険
英宝社
暗黒邪神教の洞窟―[録音資料] (ソノラマ文庫 カセッ
朝日ソノラマト版 30)CD スーパーマリオRPG オリジナル・サウンド・ヴァー
エヌティティ出版
ジョンKADOKAWA/中経小池龍之介 1日を大切にする気づきの手帳2015
出版はなったれBoogie (ジャンプスーパーコミックス)創美社
極北 私がいなくても、あなたがいれば
櫻門書房
極上のピアノ 2010 秋号 (参考演奏CD付) (ヤマハ
ヤマハミュージック
ムックシリーズ 70)
メディア
選ばれる条件 -こうやれば、突き抜けられる
DMM PUBLISHING
エレクトーングレード5~3級 STAGEA パーソナルシ
ヤマハミュージック
リーズ 2 安藤禎央エアーマインドスケープ3
メディア
ヴォーカル&ピアノ 今井美樹/I Love a Piano
YMM
フリースタイル40 「ポップとは何か」江口寿史×大根フリースタイル仁
歩き方が人生を変える！-臨床現場からの治療家たグッドタイム出版
ちの声かいじゅうずかん
ロッキング オン
試験に強い子がひきつる本―偏差値40でも東大に入潮流出版
れる驚異の和田式受験法88
青沼貴子の「マダム花子」 (バンブー・コミックス)
竹書房

Year
2007
1994
1992
2019
2014
1998
1988
1989
1996
2014
1990
2016
2010
2018
2005
2008
2018
2013
2016
1986
1996

5. Conclusion
By using (1) the records from Calil.JP, (2) OPACs of Japanese public libraries, (3)OPAC of NDL, and (4) CiNii Books, etc., we found 21 Japanese books that are held byonly a small number of public libraries. These are likely the “last copies,” as they are
not held by the NDL or university libraries too. They may be regarded as books on theRed List. Public libraries should pay special attention to them. At least, when public
libraries weed a book, they should search NDL’s OPAC to verify that the book is held
there, and if it is not, then they should donate it to the NDL.
In this paper, we investigated only books that were searched in 1,000 or more librarysystems via Calil.JP. In the future, we will randomly extract books from theabovementioned 561,574,537 search records of Calil.JP and examine whether they are
the last copies or not. Through such researches, the total number of last copies held byJapanese public libraries will be estimated.
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