Dear LIS Professionals,
You might have received many mails recently regarding the Japanese spirit,
discipline and calm during the disaster. The speed at which the roads in
Japan have been repaired is astounding!
I am sharing this long winding but a personal diary kind of a mail from a
professional personal friend -- Shigeo Sugimoto of University of Tsukuba.
I thought of sharing this with you all for the following reasons:
1. To get a sense of the Japanese life, spirit, and mindset from a
personal contact
2. Since he also talks about the roles and value to LIS professionals.
Thanks
Shalini
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Thanks from Tsukuba
From: "Shigeo Sugimoto"
Date: Mon, April 4, 2011 10:34 am
To: ISCHOOLS@MLIST.NTU.EDU.SG
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear All,
Three weeks have passed since the quake in the norther part of the main
island
of Japan. I received many messages from you after the quake. I'd like to
express
my thanks again to you. I'm writing this message to express my feelings
and thoughts
at this point. I'm hoping to share my experiences with you because this
incident
happened in Japan would be useful for us to think about the roles and
values of
information networks and libraries.
The rest of this message is long. If you are busy please ignore the rest
of this
message and receive my thanks from Tsukuba.
Nearly 30K people are killed or missing by the quake.
The incident of the Fukushima nuclear power plants is an awful disaster.
I think these facts have been reported by many news media. The rest of this
message is written purely by my own personal experiences and thoughts.
March 11(Fri),
I was attending a meeting at a meeting room on 3rd floor,
National Diet Library in Tokyo when the first major quake happened at 15:46.
The second major one came 30minutes after the first one. Many of us in the
room hided ourselves under tables, which means that the shake was
significantly
large even in Tokyo. We got information from the Internet during the
meeting but
continued our meeting until 5:30pm.
Most of the public transportation services were shut down immediately after
the quake. NDL extended their service for the public to 8:30pm, which is
very unusual. At NDL closed their service but they allowed their guests
in the reading rooms to stay over night and provided blankets and foods
which had been prepared for emergency. I stayed over night at an office of
NDL
and had to stay one more night in Tokyo because of traffic shutdown to
Tsukuba.
While I was staying overnight at NDL, UStream and Twitter were the main
information
source for me and my colleagues. Email on mobile phones, which is the most
heavily
used communication media in our ordinary lives, was working in
Tokyo/Tsukuba not
reliable because of too much traffic.
March 14 to 20,
Drs. Schubert Foo and Stu Weibel arrived in Tsukuba as a visiting scholar
at my school
and research center. Because the living environment in Tsukuba was not
perfect especially
for non-Japanese speakers who are not familiar with Tsukuba, I decided to
go to Kyoto
with them for a week to visit some institutions in Kyoto with which I'm
collaborating
in my research - NDL Kansaikan, Kyoto Manga Museum and Kyoto Univ.
(As of today, Tsukuba Express provides four services between Tokyo and
Tsukuba for every
hour during day time and more in rush hours, which is about 80% of the
normal.)
March 21 - 27,
I returned from Kyoto to Tokyo and stayed two nights in Tokyoãbecause I
had to attend
several meetings in Tokyo. Frequency of metro trains which I used were a
little less
than usual but I didn't feel any inconvenience. I found less illuminations
in the city
and less brightness in showcases in order to save electricity.
Tokyo is darker than before but not so dark in the night, and there is no
significant
change of the safety of the city at this point. The air in Tokyo seems
better than before
the quake because of less activities, I guess. Radio activity level is a
little higher
than before and decreasing. There is no significant danger for our health
based on
news on TV and newspapers. The air is much better than it was 40-30 years
ago when
the Japanese economy was growing very rapidly.
U.Tsukuba canceled the commencement ceremony that was scheduled on March
25 because
of the damages on campus and other social and infrastructural problems.
At the meetings in Tokyo, there were two interesting discussions from my
viewpoint.
1. What libraries, publishers and creators can contribute to the people in
the
disaster areas and living in evacuation shelters. (a meeting of an
advisory
panel for promotion of use of digital publishing hosted by agency of
culture,
ministry of education)
- JLA expressed willingness to send copies of books by fax and/or
electronically
to the libraries in the damaged areas, which is not allowed in the
ordinary situation
because of copyrights. Delegates from publishers and creators were
very supportive.
- Publishers communities are providing useful information for free. For
example,
a publisher which is specialized in medical information provides
e-journal for free.
2. How to improve usability of governmental document and records
management systems
under this disastrous situation. (an advisory group meeting for
governmental records
management hosted at Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.)
- Some local governments lost their servers and paper records. Branch
offices of
the national government were also damaged. There is a case that very
basic registration
records of local residents, which were maintained by a local
government and backed up
the regional branch of the national government, are lost. This would
boost cloud-nization
of the governmental records keeping system.
- Information is not well shared in the government offices and it
causes delays and
problems in the decision process. This would be a Japanese specific
problem but
common problem in bureaucratic system, especially under this very
emergency and
chaotic situation.
March 28-present
I used this week to clean-up my office. This was the most challenging task
with me
and because my office was already disastrous before the quake.:-)
There is a photos of my lab and office taken right after the quake by my
student.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsunagun/ (The bottom six photos show my
office.)
My office and lab are on the fourth floor and no serious damages.
Two PCs and one display were broken when they fallen down.
Three weeks since the quake have passed very very fast. I think this is an
important
opportunity for us to re-think about the value of information and the
roles of libraries.
Reliability of information and information resources are more crucial than
usual
under the emergency situation. Significant amount of local memories and
records were lost
because many public libraries, museums and city/town offices were lost or
heavily damaged.
Fortunately, no riot or panic has happened by now since the quake, and
there is
no serious infection of flu or other diseases. However, there are rumor
which cause
fear among people in the disaster areas.
And, news about radio activity have caused some affects on our lives,
which are mostly
over-reaction by the general public. For example, it is hard to buy
bottled mineral water
in this week. Bottled tea and soft-drinks are available but plain water.
-- KEK's page would be useful for those people who have interests in radio
-- activity in Tsukuba.
-- Dose rate at Tsukuba (KEK) http://rcwww.kek.jp/norm/index-e.html
-- (http://www.kek.jp/quake/en/index.html)
Lastly, most of the city infrastructure of Tsukuba has recovered. The
distance
to the Fukushima nuclear plant is 160KM (=100miles). My impression about our
society is that we are mentally depressed a bit because of the serious
damage caused
by Tsunami and the nuclear plant incident. I and my colleagues at Tsukuba
are starting
new academic year with new students from April 7.
Thanks for your patience.
Best wishes,
-- Shigeo
Dr. Shalini Urs
Executive Director and Professor
International School of Information Management
University of Mysore
Mysore - 570006
Phone : + 91 821 2514699
Fax : + 91 821 2519209
www.isim.ac.in
ISiM - Management School of IT. Technology School for IM
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