The National
Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports on developments
in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission. It also provides
occasional re-ports on developments in other East Asian countries. These reports
are intended to provide information for the use of NSF program officers and
policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.
The National
Institute of Informatics (NII) was created on April 1, 2000, as a center for
integrated research and development (R&D) in information and communication
science (“informatics”) and for the development of the academic research and
education informatics infrastructure. The
NII builds upon the national science information networks, database services and
other functions of the former National Center of Science Information Systems (NACSIS),
which ceased to exist with the creation of the NII.
Dr. Hiroshi Inose, formerly NACSIS Director-General, became
Director-General of NII on April 1.
Asked about the
differences between NII and its predecessor organization, Dr. Inose explained
that researchers at the new institute are encouraged to focus not only on purely
scientific issues but also on “real world problems” in formulating their
research programs and to address them in such a way as to help strengthen the
academic informatics R&D infrastructure in Japan.
In other words, the new institute is expected to promote synergies
between infrastructure and R&D. More
specifically, the new institute is charged to a) develop and strengthen
infrastructure for informatics research in Japan, b) to promote basic research
not only in those R&D areas hitherto pursued by NACSIS, but in broader areas
including not only the natural sciences and engineering, but also the social
science and the humanities.
Dr. Inose intends
to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to research at NII; to encourage inter-sectoral
collaboration among academia, government and industrial laboratories, and to
expand international collaboration. Arrangements have been made to accept
foreign scholars as visiting scholars. Currently,
there are three foreign faculty members working at NII: one French associate
professor, one British associate professor and one Chinese associate professor.
It is anticipated that an additional Chinese scientist and a Korean
scientist will join NII as visiting scholars in the near future.
The concept of a
national institute for informatics for academic researchers first emerged in a
1997 report of the Science Council of Japan (JSC) in which JSC called upon the
government for more support for computer science research in Japanese
universities. This report reflected
concern that IT research at Japanese universities was not sufficiently advanced.
In response, the Ministry of Education and Science (Monbusho) established
an advisory panel charged with exploring the question of whether to create a new
research institute in the field of information science.
The panel issued an interim report in March 1998 and a final report in
March 1999, both endorsing the establishment of a new inter-university research
institute through the reorganization and expansion of NACSIS.
Responding to
these recommendations, Monbusho established a Preparation Committee for the
Establishment of an Institute of Informatics in April 1999.
Concurrently, NACSIS established a special office to prepare for the
imminent shift to NII. The
preparatory committee issued its final report in February 2000, which led to the
formal inauguration of the new National Institute of Informatics on April 1,
2000, the first day of Japanese Fiscal Year 2000.
To help implement these plans, Monbusho allocated 2.5 billion yen (about
$25 million) under the second JFY1999 Supplementary Budget to provide equipment
and facilities for the new institute. Monbusho
also authorized 16 new faculty positions in addition to those carried over from
NACSIS, bringing the total number of NII faculty members to 69.
The stated goals
of the new institute are to:
1)
promote
holistic research to bridge the gap between theoretical studies and practical
applications;
2)
encourage
contributions to the international knowledge base, including increased
collaboration with foreign universities and institutions;
3) make the most of research results to bring benefit to society; and
4)
expand cooperative relationships with university graduate schools to
provide advanced training in the field of informatics.
While NACSIS'
R&D department had four research divisions (science information research,
systems research, developmental research, and research trend research), NII's
research organization has been expanded to seven, as follows:
1)
Information
Foundation Research Division
2)
Infrastructure
Systems Research Division
3)
Software
Research Division
4)
Multimedia
Information Research Division
5)
Intelligent
Systems Research Division
6)
Human
and Social Information Research Division
7)
Research
Information Research Division
NII has also
taken over all of NACSIS’s network and information services, the most
prominent of which are the following.
Science
Information Network. Networks
are among the most important infrastructure elements for information and
communication. In order to promote
the flow and exchange of information among researchers in universities and other
academic research institutions in Japna, NII operates the Science Information
Network thereby interconnecting LANs, WANS and other networking systems to which
researchers’ terminals are connected. This network enables NII to provide the NII Information
Retrieval Service and the Electronic Mail Services for academic researches in
Japan.
Currently, NII's
Science Information Network connects over 700 universities and academic
institutions in Japan. SCINET is a high-speed, 640 Mbps network with a direct 300
Mbps link to research networks in the United States, as well as direct links to
CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, the U.K. and Thailand.
NACSIS-CAT.
To take advantage
of its Science Information Network, NII inherited from NACSIS, the catalogue
information service known as NACSIS-CAT. The
main purpose of the system is to construct the union catalogs of books and
periodicals throughout the country through cooperative data entry (shared
cataloging) from participating university libraries.
NACSIS-CAT refers to standard bibliographical databases such as JAPAN
MARC and USMARC for efficient input work, and adopts a shared cataloging system
to avoid duplicate cataloging work in libraries and to achieve labor saving and
quicker processing. The number of
university libraries connected online to NACSIS-CAT is about 670 and the total
number of holdings registered has exceeded 41 million, including books and
periodicals.
Since 1995,
NACSIS-CAT has also been linked via the Internet to major research libraries in
the U.K., including: The British Library Oriental and India Office Collections,
Cambridge University Library, Bodleian Library of University of Oxford, School
of East Asian Studies Library of the University of Sheffield, Scottish Center
for Japanese Studies of the University of London, and the Japan Foundation
London Language Centre. The Science Information Exchange Project with China was
started in 1998 with the aim of promoting the dissemination of academic
information between Japan and China, and the Beijing Center for Japanese studies
established to provide assistance with computerization.
As of June 1999, over 13,000 items of information had been recorded.
The
Internet-based retrieval service (Webcat) for NACSIS-CAT is available for use by
non-profit-making users for information retrieval of both books and periodicals.
Inter-Library
Loan Service (NACSIS-ILL). Also
provided by NII's Science Information Network is the so-called NACSIS-ILL–a
system to support the exchange of information for inter-library loan services.
This labor saving system permits prompt exchange of information for
inter-library loan of monographs and periodicals. About 700 libraries in Japan
belonging to universities, inter-university research institutes, technical
colleges and junior colleges currently participate in NACSIS-ILL.
In addition, the National Diet Library (NDL) and the British Library
Document Supply Center (BLDSC) are participating.
Electronic
Library Service (NACSIS-ELS). NACSIS-ELS
is an information service that enables users to retrieve a page image database
containing lists of academic journals and magazines along with bibliographic
information via the Internet. Researchers
can search journal articles by titles, author names or keywords at their
computers, and obtain necessary articles by checking the table of contents and
browsing pages. High-quality
printouts of pertinent pages are also possible using local printers.
Currently, the database includes academic journals published by Japanese
academic societies. Information
coverage will be expanded with the increase of the number of participating
academic societies.
Information
Retrieval Service (NACSIS-IR). In
the information retrieval service, called NACSIS-IR, more than 90 million
records of information in all fields of humanities, social sciences and natural
sciences have been accumulated so as to be supplied on-line to researchers.
There are 59 kinds of databases available in this service.
The NII’s
headquarters (including its administrative department and research divisions) is
located on the13th to 23rd floors of a new 23-story building commanding a
spectacular view of the Imperial Palace grounds at in the heart of Tokyo.
The construction cost of this building, named the National Center of
Sciences Building, were approximately xx25 billion (~$250 million).
Its lower floors (4th–11th floors) are occupied by two other Monbusho-related
organizations, namely: (1) the Center for National University Finance (headed by
Mr. H. Osaki, former JSPS Director-General), and (2) the National Organization
for Academic Degrees, a special degree granting institution.
NII’s
networking and database service operations carried out at its Chiba Campus
located about 20 miles east of Tokyo, where most of the large-sized equipment
and database processing systems are installed.
NII also has an
International Seminar House for Advanced Studies in a resort area of Karuizawa,
Nagano Prefecture. Built in March
1997 on a land area of 1000 stub or about 3,300 square meters donated to the
government by Dr. and Mrs. Inose, the seminar house has several conference rooms
for seminars, workshops and conferences, as well as a small lodging facility
that can accommodate up to 10 guests. This
facility has been named–appropriately–Inose Lodge
Additional,
detailed information about the National Institute for Informatics can be found
on its homepage–http://www.nii.ac.jp.
Dr. Hiroshi
Inose’s courtesy in taking the time to discuss the aims of the NII and
arranging a demonstration of its network capabilities for the NSF Tokyo Office
staff is gratefully acknowledged. This report is based on an initial draft provided by Mr.
Masanobu Miyahara.
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