In the United States | In Japan
| In the United States |
InfoHawk Catalog (University of Iowa Libraries Catalog)
OCLC WorldCat 
National and international resources.
Bibliographies for Japanese Language Books
There are many bibliographies in the Japanese Collection that cover a
topic in depth. The best place to start for information about what has
been published is A Guide to reference books for Japanese studies =
Nihon kenkyu no tame no sanko tosho (Tokyo: International House of
Japan Library, 1997). Main Reference Z3306 .G82 1997
Hints
Romanization
Many library online catalogs still do not allow searching with Japanese
characters or keyword searches in Japanese. Therefore, Romanized Japanese must be used to search authors
and titles. Use modified Hepburn style as found in the standard dictionary Kenkyusha's new Japanese-English dictionary (Main Reference PL679
.K4 1974).
InfoHawk Catalog now offers title browse search and author browse search in Japanese. Select Title beginning with... or Japanese author beginning with... from the search type pulldown menu.
OCLC WorldCat is capable of handling searches in Japanese language. To search OCLC WorldCat in Japanese, you need to switch your search screen to 日本語 mode.
Word Division
There are rules for how to divide Japanese into words. However,
these are so many inconsistencies in actual practice that it is best to
try different combinations if there is any doubt. (For example, daijiten is correct for 大事典, but in some records this will turn up as dai jiten. 日本史 should be romanized as Nihon shi, however, some records treat it as Nihonshi.)
Subject Searches
Library of Congress subject headings are used for both western language
and Japanese language library materials.
| In Japan |
Online Catalogs
|
Webcat Plus 学術情報センター |
||
| This is a union catalog of major Japanese university libraries (similar to RLIN and OCLC). It is an extremely useful and easily searched site. | ||
| National Diet Library Catalog 国立国会図書館 | ||
| Records to Japanese language books published since 1948 and western language books published since 1986 can now be searched online. An excellent interface makes subject and keyword searching easy to do. | ||
University Library Catalogs
| Waseda University 早稲田大学学術情報システム | ||
| Easy to search catalog with instructions in Japanese and English. Records contain Romanizations for the author, title, and publisher so it is a good place to go when you do not know how to read the characters. | ||
| Keio University 慶応大学 KOSMOS II OPAC | ||
| Easy to search catalog with instructions in Japanese and English. | ||
| University of Tokyo 東京大学オンライン蔵書目録データベース | ||
| In addition to the online catalog for university libraries this site contains a database of University of Tokyo doctoral dissertations and an extensive book contents database which gives information from tables of contents. | ||
Books in print
| Nihon shoseki somokuroku/books.or.jp 日本書籍総目録 | ||
| Books in Print for Japanese books (and many western language books) published in Japan; a print version of this annual is also available in the Acquisitions Dept. | ||
| Shuppan nenkan 出版年鑑 | ||
| The 2000 edition contains information about books published in 1999. It is classified by broad subject. EA-5 Z3303 .S5 | ||
| Book page = Hon no nenkan ブックページ: 本の年鑑 | ||
| Published annually. The 2000 edition covers 1999. Unlike the two sources above it contains detailed descriptions of book contents. EA Ref. Z3303 .S5 | ||
Books out of print
| Book Town じんぼう 古書データベース 「本の街」神田神保町オフィシャルサイト | ||
| Searchable database maintained by an association of used book dealer in the Kanda/Jinbocho area of Tokyo. | ||
| Antiquarian Booksellers of Japan 日本の古本屋 | ||
| Searchable database for a national association of used book dealers. | ||
| Kyoto Koshoten Annai 京都古書店案内 | ||
| Kyoto used booksellers" database; not searchable but divided by subject | ||
Online Bookstores
| Amazon.com Japan アマゾン | |
| Bk1 Online Bookstore ビーケーワン | |
| Kinokuniya 紀伊国屋書店 | |
| Sanseido 三省堂 |
Other
| National Institute of Japanese Literature 国文学研究資料館 | ||
| For books published in Japan in the pre-modern period there are two essential bibliographies: Kokusho somokuroku 国書総目録 and Kotenseki sogo mokuroku 古典籍総合目録. These are available online at this site. | ||
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