MIURA Taro
   Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Arts and Letters
   Position   Professor
Research Period 2002/04~2004/03
Research Topic A historical study on the national library policy in the educational and cultural policies in post-war Japan
Research Type KAKENHI Research
Consignor Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
KAKENHI Grant No. 14510267
Keyword Library History
KAKENHI CategoryLibrary and information science, humanistic and social informatics
Responsibility Research Contributor
Representative Person NEMOTO Akira
Details The library policy in postwar Japan started under a strong influence of the United States educational and cultural policies. We investigated in the American libraries the materials of the first library officer P.O.Keeney of General Headquarters CIE (Civil Information and Education Section) to clarify his idea, and found out that he brushed up his national plan which had been published in Japan so that it might be adapted to the underdevelopment countries. We also examined deliberately the materials left in Japan, and discovered some important materials. We clarified an initial history of the Japanese Society of Library Science based on the secretariat materials and the interviews to a former president and a former member of the board of director. Moreover, we found some important materials related to the enactment process of the School Library Act(1953) from both the collection left at our section of the graduate school and the personal collection of an officer at the Ministry of Education of the day kept at the National Institute of Educational Policy Library and wrote an article about school library history. We can clarify the history of the library policy and the library science under the occupation period. We compiled the bibliography of the original materials which were kept at our laboratory and published it in the report. We made it accessible to the public on the Internet. Lastly we advanced our research not only through the original documents reading but also through general analysis of the post-war Japan library development. Especially we surveyed some articles in 1960's to make clear the influence of the British public librarianship and published an article about public library service policy in the 1960s and 1970s in Japan.