Library Holdings from Tokyo Univ. Now Available Through the Internet Archive | Hacker News Reader

Library Holdings from Tokyo Univ. Now Available Through the Internet Archive

blog.archive.org

118 pointspolm237 comments

I was involved with arranging this tie-up and cowrote the Internet Archive’s blog post about it. If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to try to answer them here.

If you can share, what were some of Todai's concerns or reservations when this collaboration was first proposed?

Thanks for the question. Somewhat to my own surprise, the proposal seemed to go through quite smoothly, and I am not aware of any concerns being raised. The university library had already released those materials on its own website and wanted them to be used widely, and it saw the opportunity to mirror them on the Internet Archive as a way to make them more easily accessible to—and findable by—people worldwide. The library staff members who did the actual work of preparing and sharing the files were quite enthusiastic about it, too.

While I am the one who initiated the project, I work in a different division of the university and did not take part in any of the meetings where the proposal was discussed and approved. I was, to be honest, a bit worried that the controversy over the IA’s National Emergency Library initiative, which was in the news around the same time, might cause some people at UTokyo to have reservations, but it doesn’t seem to have done so.

My own hope is that this tie-up will create more awareness of the Internet Archive in Japan and encourage similar projects worldwide.

This is really great news, and I hope it inspires other libraries to partner directly with the Internet Archive.

Has anyone else tried to use some of these scanned archives?

I'm researching a historical book in my spare time, and every online scanned book I've tried to use, from multiple projects, has included at least one pair of missing pages where they've presumably turned two at once.

I really hope people aren't expecting these archives to be definitive or a replacement in case the books are lost.

I assume you are referring to online scanned archives in general, not just the University of Tokyo archives mentioned in the linked post.

I have been reading scanned books at the Internet Archive for more than ten years and have used them in some personal projects, including [1]. Like you, I have run into missing pages quite a few times, though perhaps not as frequently as you have. There are also sometimes problems with folded-over pages, blurred images, etc. If multiple scans of the same book are available, you might be able to find the missing pages in a different version.

Some of the original scanning institutions seem to have been more conscientious about the scanning process than others. The scans by the Getty Research Institute and by the Internet Archive itself, for example, seem better overall than some others. When I search for books that might be available in multiple versions, I usually add "-description:Google AND " at the beginning of the search string on the first pass to exclude Google’s scans, as they are often the worst quality.

Scanning is time-consuming and expensive when done well. Information about the Internet Archive’s scanning services is at [2] and [3]. An article about Google’s efforts is at [4].

[1] http://gally.net/jatsi/

[2] https://archive.org/scanning

[3] https://archive.org/details/partnerdocs

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...

Pretty cool! If you're into these kinds of historical illustrations, I highly recommend the wonderful EdX course "Visualizing Japan".

https://www.edx.org/course/visualizing-japan-1850s-1930s-wes...

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