The Miyagi Prefectural Library plans to digitize records and other items such as leaflets, booklets, photographs and videos about the Great East Japan Earthquake and make them available on the Internet.
The Miyagi Prefectural Library plans to digitize records and other items such as leaflets, booklets, photographs and videos about the Great East Japan Earthquake and make them available on the Internet.
The library said people will be able to make use of the data for disaster prevention education and to pass on to future generations the lessons learned from the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.
The library is currently collecting records from municipalities within the prefecture, and hopes to have the data available to Internet users in fiscal 2014.
The Miyagi Prefectural Library held briefings in 35 Miyagi municipalities in June. On Oct. 2, the library exchanged ideas with municipalities eager to join the project on how to gather and publish the records.
Among materials the library is seeking are leaflets, booklets, books that were not commercially published, photographs and videos.
The library said storing the records as digital data will enable people to make supplementary reading materials for disaster prevention classes at schools. Digital data is also easy to copy, search and view.
Still pressed to rebuild their communities, some of the disaster-stricken municipalities do not have the resources to gather and organize the materials on their own.
So as not to add to their burden, the prefectural library is also undertaking the work of gaining consent from the creators of texts and photographs.
"Some valuable materials are not recognized for what they are because they're too familiar to locals," said Makoto Tanaka, part of the prefectural library's earthquake library project team.
Tanaka is calling on residents to "share anything, even if it's just a leaflet."
The library began collecting materials related to the earthquake and tsunami shortly after the disaster broke out. The materials include about 3,000 books and magazines and 1,600 leaflets and photographs.
Some were made public in July 2012 as the "library of the Great East Japan Earthquake," but the prefectural library hopes to preserve them for long-term use because some discoloration and deterioration in the items have already been observed.