The Impact of Japan’s March 11th Earthquake and Tsunami on Libraries and the Conduct of Research and Publications in Japan

On March 11, 2011, a great earthquake struck northeastern Japan. For the libraries at the two campuses of the National Institute of Materials Science in Tsukuba, the biggest problems resulting from the earthquake were thousands of books being thrown off shelves and damage to electronically controlled bookshelves. Following weeks of aftershocks, the Japanese government instituted a program to reduce electricity usage and to slash all government spending. This affected all publicly-funded research institutes. Other negative consequences of the earthquake were that many overseas researchers and students returned to their own countries, and the remaining researchers were forced to spend a higher proportion of their working lives at their desks while waiting for experimental facilities to be repaired–in some cases for at least a year. The damage caused by the earthquake to physical infrastructure clearly shows how vital it is to digitize a library’s resources. Social networks such as Twitter proved to be very useful in keeping researchers informed about library services. I believe that in the future, it will be increasingly important for libraries to: (1) make their resources available on the Internet, (2) decentralize resources, and (3) establish interoperability with other libraries