National Diet Library
国立国会図書館における新たなレファレンス・ツール ―リサーチ・ナビを中心として
Research Navi
New Reference Tools of the National Diet Library

The National Diet Library (NDL) offers a wide-range of information that users can access via the NDL website. However, users sometimes struggle to find what they need from the vast amounts of information. The NDL reorganized the existing Search Guide and launched "RESEARCH NAVI," a reference tool on the NDL website including some new contents in May 2009. This presentation focuses on the outline of RESEARCH NAVI and how to use it.

RESEARCH NAVI is a navigator for searching. It shows ways of searching when users want to search for something but do not know how. With RESEARCH NAVI, users can get information about the issue for which they are searching, such as a guide for searching, actual reference cases, databases for searching, advice on searching and other related information.

RESEARCH NAVI offers users to search for items in the whole collections of the NDL from many directions. For example, users can (1) search by keywords, (2) search from subject or genre such as politics, economy, history or medical care, (3) search by the type of materials such as books, magazines, newspapers, statistics and maps, (4) search the digital libraries of the NDL, which provide images, and (5) look for search sites of institutions outside the NDL.

In the presentation, demonstrating the RESEARCH NAVI, effective ways of searching information provided by the NDL are introduced.

In addition to RESEARCH NAVI, recent activities of the NDL are briefly explained, such as the digitization of materials with the supplementary budget for the current fiscal year, collection of the internet information based on legislation enacted in July 2009, and improvement of the service of NDL-OPAC.

Institute Link:http://rnavi.ndl.go.jp/rnavi/

presentation: English | Japanese