Tsurumi Collection

Tsurumi Collection is a collaborative project between Prof. Ching-chih Chen of Simmons College and Prof. Takashi Nagatsuka of the Department of Library, Archival and Information Studies, Tsurumi University, Yokohama, Japan. In celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Tsurumi University, a special volume with 80 selective pages from over 60 rare ancient Japanese Waka poems and tales from the University Library's Rare Book Collection was produced. Contemporary Japanese translations and descriptive information are also included. The Library has also published a special volume of about 40 ancient western maps of Japan, dating back to 14th century. These unique and rare resources are invaluable to researchers in Japanese studies. With the kind permission of the Tsurumi University Library, the Simmons team scanned these images and created basic metadata, while Tsurumi faculty - Takashi Horikawa, Fumito Ikura, Kyoko Yamakawa and Takashi Nagatsuka - created the much needed "description" of the Waka poems and tales.

The process in developing this digital collection is a perfect example of both the difficulties -- distance, cultural differences between the subject and the technology specialists, language difficulties, ability to interpret ancient contents, etc. -- and the exciting results of international collaboration. Since few Japanese currently can read these ancient Waka poems, sound files in both English and Japanese for each image are provided.  We are grateful to Kyoko Yamakawa for narrating these sound files. To explore bilingual retrieval capabilities, we have included the metadata in both English and Japanese.

Global Memory Net has thus provided new ways for academic users to access and exploit these significant research images via a global network in a way not possible before. One can explore this image collection by clicking the following project label.


Enter Tsurumi Collection - Image