Books Held and Weeded by Japanese Public Libraries and Not Held by National Diet Library

Abstract

　By using search records in CALIL.JP (i.e., a free online service that enables federated searching in online public access catalogs [OPACs] in Japan), NDL ONLINE (the OPAC of the National Diet Library [NDL], i.e., a Japanese legal deposit library), OPACs of Japanese public libraries, and CiNii Books (the OPAC of the Japanese university libraries), etc., we found the existence of books as follows: (1) books that were held only by public libraries and were not held by the NDL (and Japanese university libraries), (2) books that were weeded by public libraries among them, (3) books that were no longer held by the NDL, public and university libraries as a result of such weeding, and (4) books in danger of such extinction, i.e., those that were held only by one public library and were not held by the NDL and university libraries (i.e., last copy). Furthermore, by using the list of books that were weeded by Tsukuba City Library, we showed that the library also weeded books that were not held by the NDL. Considering that cooperative preservation among Japanese public libraries are few, we propose that when public libraries weed books that are not held by the NDL, they donate the books to the NDL.