This site is launched to test the feasibility of blogging services to help faculty and students cope with various transitions going on in the OSU Japanese Collections.

Issues include: the temporary relocation of the library holdings to a former factory two miles away from the existing Main Library, the increasing location of books in an off-site depository, the cancellation of many journals, and an increasing amount of digitized resources available to library users.

An “information needs assessment” for users of the Japanese collections in the Ohio State University Libraries is also underway. This blog has been set up to address some of the needs identified thus far. A workshop is planned for mid-April. []

During Winter Quarter 2005, Maureen Donovan (Japanese Studies Librarian) and Yuji Tosaka (Kent State University graduate student in library and information science doing at practicum at Ohio State University Libraries) met with a number of faculty members using a questionnaire designed to focus discussion on the issues noted above. Mr. Tosaka has also done much of the work to set up this blog, including the coding to establish pull-down menus at the sides.