Tag: 15. März 2011

The 12 students in the inaugural class—eight candidates for the master’s degree and four for the doctoral degree—are expected to contribute to developments of archival systems, whose formulation in Japan is said to be behind internationally.

‘‘It’s the mission of archivists to create a truly democratic society through protecting records on social, economic or cultural activities, and relaying them for posterity,’’ Masahito Ando, director of the Graduate Course in Archival Science, said. ‘‘I hope we can educate those who will assume this significant role.’‘

Preservation of those records was considered merely ‘‘just putting old documents in storehouses’’ in postwar Japan, according to Ando, who was a professor in the Department of Archival Studies at the National Institute of Japanese Literature before becoming a professor at Gakushuin.

However, there have been increasing calls since around the 1980s to nurture archivists as a profession to keep the records and pass the memory of overall human activities to later generations ‘‘as part of efforts to achieve democratic society,’’ he said.

Archivists are expected, for example, to work with state and local government officials to decide which administrative documents should be maintained and how they should be organized for the convenience of public access.

The importance of the duties of archivists is rising at a time when there is public focus on the mishandlings of a massive number of pension records and data on hepatitis C infections via tainted blood products by state organizations.

Looking back at the past, meanwhile, failure to keep administrative documents during and before World War II has affected people’s fates, with some war-displaced Japanese forced to remain in China as they cannot be recognized as Japanese due to lack of such documents as family registrations, Ando said.

Reflecting the circumstances, a group of lawmakers compiled an ‘‘urgent proposal’’ last November to urge the government to beef up the management system of public documents ‘‘in order to enhance transparency of administration and achieve accountability.’‘

With an eye on the enactment of a law to set up comprehensive rules to handle official documents, the group also called for establishing archival facilities in each prefecture and major cities while educating archivists who will lead the envisaged system.

The lawmakers include former education minister Takeo Kawamura, former post minister Seiko Noda and former Justice Minister Mayumi Moriyama.

Ando said he also expects companies to employ archivists ‘‘just as hiring corporate lawyers’’ and entrust them to manage in-house documents, in a period when businesses have been hit by a series of scandals such as falsification of expiration dates on food products.

Companies are likely to hide or eliminate unfavorable records, but they could retain public trust if they maintain such records with the support of archivists and make use of them to improve their business activities, he suggested.

Formulating archives at educational facilities, including colleges, or in communities is another field in which archivists could take part.

Sachiko Ikenaga, a master’s student with experience working in museums, said, ‘‘I hope I can establish a methodology to archive museums’ actual operations and hand them down through the generations.’‘

‘‘If we can keep the ‘archival heritage’ of a community at a local archive, it would be a new educational base for local history, at which children could follow the steps of their seniors and share their wisdom for the future life,’’ Ando said.

Yuichi Aoki, a doctoral student in the graduate school, studied Japanese history through reading paleography in the Edo period, ‘‘but now I’m interested in the documents themselves.’‘

He plans to research theoretically on why and how the old documents should be preserved and handed down in the future. ‘‘I also want to learn, for example, about how to scientifically maintain old worm-eaten papers,’’ he said.

One of the issues that experts need to address is the introduction of qualification system for archivists.

An envisaged system is to allow a private organization to recognize a person as a certified archivist and the state authorizes it, according to Ando. ‘‘I think a master’s degree should be required to become a qualified archivist as it’s the international standard,’’ he said.

Of the many challenges present and future archivists face is to collect documents on Japan’s past colonial policies and share them with other Asian countries, as some wartime history remains blank, Ando said.

The main purpose of these online SeismoArchives is to preserve seismograms and related materials in computer data files so that they are readily accessible online as source materials for research. For the charge and mission of this Committee, please click: ICPWHS.

Because no funding is yet available for constructing these SeismoArchives, we depend on volunteers and donors of data files and/or financial support for scanning analog seismograms that dated back to 1882. Although the IRIS DMC has been managing modern digital seismogram data since the 1980s, the bulk of the seismograms recorded by seismic observatories and networks for over 100 years are in analog form on either papers or microfilms.

These analog seismograms (about 50 millions pieces) have been disappearing at an alarming rate. We are now concentrating on preserving a tiny fraction of the seismograms recorded by the Worldwide Standardized Seismograph Network in the 1960s and 1970s (about 5 million seismograms on 70mm film chips), and by the Historical Seismogram Filming Project in the 1980s (about 0.5 million seismograms on microfilms for earthquakes prior to 1963).

SeismoArchives are grouped into 3 major types: by individual earthquakes, by reference stations, and by special projects. Background materials are also included. Please click one of the following items.

I. Archives by Individual Earthquakes
The purpose of these International Digital Earthquake Archives (IDEAs) is to preserve earthquake data, specially seismograms, for future research.

For example, Hiroo Kanamori used seismograms recorded at Debilt, the Netherlands to demonstrate that the 1960 Chile and the 1964 Alaskan earthquakes are indeed “Great Earthquakes”, much larger than other “great earthquakes”, such as, 1952 Kamchatka and 1963 Kurile earthquakes, 1923 Kanto and 1924 Mindanao, 2001 Peru (Pasadena), and 2001 Peru (KEV).

Seismograms, data, and related materials of selected earthquakes are stored in archives as computer data files so that they are freely accessible via the Internet, and seismograms (in originally scanned resolution) are downloadable from the IRIS Data Management Center.

II. Archives by Stations
These archives contain seismograms and related materials of the “Reference Stations of the World”. These Reference Stations are chosen for their strategic locations and long durations in operation.

III. Archives by Special Projects
The purpose of these archives by projects is to preserve scanned seismograms created by some special projects. The scanned image files will be searchable by some simple queries, and related materials will be available to aid the users. Seismograms will be downloadable (in originally scanned resolution) from the IRIS Data Management Center.

IV. Background Information

This section contains digital image files of papers, books, and reports that provide some useful information.

1. Historical Information: Early developments in seismology, especially about instruments.

2. Seismographic Stations: Lists of historical and WWSSN stations that contain detailed station information.