Using effective search strategies to access available English language resources for research in Japan
James Hicks
As a student of library science working on his second distance degree, Hicks is well-placed to advise regarding the improving access to research materials for English speakers in Japan. He introduced four sources of materials: academic libraries, subscription databases, personal research budgets and free online resources. He recommended considering the research community that will be using the journals that you subscribe to with your research budget and balancing the content
Japanese academic libraries are well-resourced by international standards and tend to contain about 25-30% English materials. He walked us through filtering information to get the most from online public access catalogs (OPAC), by using links to publishers' webpages for better indexing.
Hicks also pointed out that the English language pages of government websites are not translations of the originals but actually separate and considerably skimpier versions-- so it is more useful to translate the original with free tools such as Google Chrome.
You can sometimes access institutional subscription databases and print out what you need if you are physically present in the library. You can also carry out more fruitful searches by ignoring the results list and going instead to the list on the left which provides more helpful links and search terms.
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