General

Q. What is the Japan Disasters Digital Archive? Where do the materials in the archive come from?
A. The Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA) is an online portal offering access to a wide range of digital materials collected by various digital archiving projects. These include websites archived by Internet Archive, photographs archived by Yahoo! Japan, tweets collected by Hypercities, testimonials contributed by visitors to the site, and much more. You can see the list of JDA partners here.

Q. Does the JDA store all the items that it lists?
A. No, the JDA interface that you are using does not store copies of the items provided by its partners. Instead, the JDA links to digital materials archived by one of these partners, allowing you to search, view, and sort items across these separate archives. The only items that are stored in the JDA itself are user-contributed testimonials, documents, images, and collections.

Q. Can I contribute materials to the JDA?
A. Yes! The JDA is a participatory project that seeks to break down the barrier between the creators of digital materials and the users of the archive. To contribute, use the “Contribute” function (on the top navigation bar), which allows any user to submit a testimonial about personal experience during or after the disaster, or suggest additional websites that should be harvested and preserved by the Internet Archive. More information about how to contribute to the archive can be viewed here.

Q. How can I use the JDA to teach a class on the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011?
A. The JDA has been used at several universities and schools to teach not only on the disasters in Japan but also on digital research methods that incorporate multimedia contents. More information about how the archive has been used in the classroom can be found here.

Q. How long will the JDA last?
A. The JDA aims to be a permanent repository for digital records of the disasters.

Q. The website is not functioning properly, what can I do?
A. The JDA is optimized for the Google Chrome web browser. Please make sure you are using the most recent version of Chrome and try cleaning your browser's cache before using the JDA. If the issue persists, please contact the JDA team (info@jdarchive.org).