過去のイベント

国際子ども図書館主催の展示会のお知らせです。

講演会「プランゲ文庫について」

講師:チャールズ・B・ラウリー氏(メリーランド大学図書館長)

THE GORDON W. PRANGE COLLECTION

A SYMBOL OF JAPAN-UNITED STATES PARTNERSHIP:

MEMORIAL LECTURE AT THE OPENING OF THE CHILDREN'S COLLECTION EXHIBIT HELD AT THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE?TOKYO, FEBRUARY 1, 2003

CHARLES B. LOWRY, PH.D., DEAN OF LIBRARIES

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK

It is a great honor and a personal pleasure to be a co-sponsor with the International Library of Children's Literature, branch of the National Diet Library for this final exhibit of the Prange Collection children's materials. This is a culminating event for us all and an extremely important opportunity to make Prange materials directly viewable in Japan. I bring you greetings from the University of Maryland. I want to thank both the National Diet Library and the ILCL staff for this wonderful event. I also want to thank for their long-standing support?Waseda University, the Japan Library Association, and Nichimy Corp..

This branch of the National Diet Library is a great symbol of the importance your country places on reading and learning from the youngest age. When I was last in Japan, this wonderful library was partially operational but still under construction. During my visit in 2001 it was clear to me as a director of a large research library that the vision for the ILCL promised a bright future. I want to observe how important it is that this is such an aesthetically pleasing building that combines the beauty of the former Imperial Library with a striking modern addition. The services of the ILCL, its collections and the attractive facility together mean that it will become an important library not only in your country but an example and resource to the rest of the world. As the Dean of Libraries at the University of Maryland, it makes us very proud that an exhibit of children's materials from our Prange Collection is being featured in this way by the ILCL.

In my remarks today, I want to share with you a brief account of the origins of the Prange Collection?how it was collected, how it came to Maryland and most importantly how this international treasure has been cared for and preserved by institutions from both of our countries. I also want to touch briefly on the opportunities for the future. Ambassador Michael Mansfield once remarked that the "Japan-U.S. relationship is the most important bi-lateral relationship in the world?bar none." He was speaking, of course, about international politics and economics. His words might also apply to the library cooperation between our two countries to preserve the Prange Collection, which now rests on the experience of several decades. But this story began in the shadow of war almost sixty years ago.

During the administration of the MacArthur GHQ, the Civil Censorship Division was established. Between 1945 and 1949, the CCD was responsible for reviewing all Japanese publications to identify violations of the Code for the Japanese Press. All publications, however small or non-controversial, were subjected to CCD examination. When CCD examiners identified violations, censorship action was taken. In the vast majority of cases, only very small portions of publications were expurgated, but there are a few instances when whole publications were suppressed. We also should remember that many millions of pages were published without censorship and today our great partnership is providing access to any that were suppressed. We have always had a major objective of providing full access to all censored materials so that there would be full understanding of this history.

Today, Americans are surprised at the practices of the CCD and find them out of keeping with our First Amendment ideals. My own opinion is that the suppressed documents can tell us as much about my own country in the immediate postwar period as about Japan. I will say also, that even though we view censorship today as reprehensible, without the CCD there would be great gaps in the collected literature of the period. The unsettled conditions of the postwar period meant that Japanese libraries were not in a position to collect effectively. A cooperative analysis in 2000 by the NDL and University of Maryland Libraries indicates that over 60% of the holdings of the Prange Collection including the holdings of children's materials may not be available at NDL. We must conclude that they are not readily available in any library in Japan. We conservatively estimate over 50% of Prange materials are not held by university or public libraries anywhere else in the world. If any statistics should persuade us that our cooperation is intellectually and culturally of international importance?these do!

The Prange Collection has been the focus of international attention for many years, but the long working relationship between the National Diet Library and the University of Maryland Libraries has been the strongest reason that we have successfully preserved the collection. We all know that there are challenges still ahead of us, but experience tells us that together we will overcome them. The Gordon W. Prange Collection is the most comprehensive collection in existence of publications issued in Japan during the immediate post-World War II years, 1945-1949. The materials in Prange include virtually everything published on all subjects during this period -- books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, news agency photos, political posters, maps and related archival materials. The Collection includes an enormous group of Japanese language materials and is supported by many English language holdings. Materials of CCD origin include:

・ 13,799 magazine titles;

・ 18,047 newspaper titles;

・ 71,000 books & pamphlets;

・ 10,000 newspaper photos

・ 90 posters, and

・ 640 maps

I want to emphasize that this collection is enormously important because it represents a gap in collections held by Japanese libraries.

Gordon Prange was born in the American heartland?in the farming community of Pomery, Iowa in 1910. He was educated at the University of Iowa, receiving his Ph.D. in German History in 1937 and became a member of the University of Maryland History d

Department in 1938. At the outbreak of war he became an officer in the U.S. Navy and was in Japan, then he left service in 1946 returning to the University of Maryland to become a full Professor. Within a matter of months he took a leave of absence from Maryland and returned to Japan with his young family at the request of General Willoughby to serve as the civilian chief of General MacArthur's 100-member Historical Section. It is fortunate that an historian who understood the value of the materials collected by the CCD was on hand when censorship of the Japanese media was lifted in 1949. Prange immediately set to work with GHQ, the Army and the President of the University of Maryland, Harry Byrd, to secure the materials. In December 1949 he informed President Byrd that General Willoughby's decision was to send the CCD materials to the University of Maryland. Prange worked tirelessly to organize the shipment of 500 boxes of materials that arrived at the University by the Spring of 1950.

It is important to realize that the University of Maryland was a far smaller institution in 1950 than it is now, and had not yet begun the rapid growth which would make it the prominent research institution we know today with 35,000 students, 3,656 faculty and a library system of seven libraries with 3,000,000 volumes. In 1950 the student body was around 13,000 the faculty numbered only 575, but most importantly it did not have a separate library building. The Library was housed in the Shoemaker building along with some teaching departments. Thus, there was no choice but to store the materials until 1958 when the new McKeldin Library was opened. The CCD materials were immediately moved to this modern new facility.

From this time on, the University of Maryland intensified its efforts to make the collection available to scholars and students. By 1962 most of the 500 crates had been opened, the materials placed on shelving. In 1963 the East Asia Department of the Libraries was opened and its first Head, Mr. Kaneko, hired a staff. Cataloging and processing began in earnest. The task was large and beyond the means of an able but small staff to complete with any great speed. One must remember that even national libraries like NDL or the Library of Congress are challenged today to process each year the publishing output of our respective countries. The best intentions of the University of Maryland and its Libraries could not overcome quickly the challenges of processing five years of publishing output from Japan.

Throughout the remainder of the 1960's and 1970's the staff of the East Asia Department worked diligently to improve access to the collection. All materials were made accessible on shelves; about 15,000 books were given preliminary cataloging; and in 1980 about half of the censored materials were microfilmed. It was not until September 15, 1978, that the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland passed a motion to name the collection the "Gordon W. Prange Collection." Gordon Prange died within two years of the naming and all of his works were published posthumously. Between 1974 and 1984 80% of the newspaper collection was sorted and 18,000 brief index records were prepared. Similarly, using CCD worksheets the entire magazine collection was organized and sorted by 1985. Efforts continued into the 1980's and as the Prange became better known, interest in Japan increased. For instance, in 1988, the City of Yokohama, Office of Municipal History requested that all Prange magazine and newspaper titles published in Kanagawa prefecture be microfilmed, with the cost covered by the City of Yokohama. A total of 100,000 pages were microfilmed. The film was sent to the City of Yokohama in 1991.

With these projects in the late 1980's came new partnerships and significant success but new problems. By this time a new peril to the collection was becoming evident?the relentless progress of disintegration in high-acid content papers that has been called "slow fires" since it really is chemical oxidation. It is a great irony that this problem was not fully appreciated by the international library community until the early 1980's. In fact references to acid papers do not appear in library professional journals until the mid-1980's. The problem was particularly acute in the Prange Collection because paper used in publishing in the postwar era was of the lowest quality?often pulp with very high acid content. The problem of poor paper was aggravated by other factors.

For instance, few libraries in the U.S. or Japan were air-conditioned before the end of the 1960's. This led to very dry conditions in winter and very humid and hot conditions in summer. Acid embrittlement of paper is accelerated by ambient temperature and humidity?unavoidable conditions in the absence of air-conditioning. Thus the collection was housed for years without air-conditioning until modern air-conditioning was installed in McKeldin Library in 1967. As we learned about acid embrittlement in the 1980's, it became clear that preservation microfilming must be the highest priority for the collection and this work was carried out during the 1990's. A personal story clearly describes the fragility of the papers. When I came to the University in 1996, Hisayo Murukami (the Prange Manager) introduced me to the collection. One morning she came to my office to show me a discovery?several issues of a small newspaper that she had put in acid-free folders just two years before had disintegrated completely.

From 1992-97, a massive effort was undertaken in which the UM Libraries and the National Diet Library worked cooperatively to preserve the 13,000 magazine titles in the Prange Collection. Over 63,000 microfiche and an extensive bibliographic finding guide were produced. From 1997-2001, the UM Libraries undertook the second major filming project with the participation of NDL and microfilmed the Prange newspapers (17,000 titles). Filming of all newspaper titles A-Z, as well as the index, was completed in June 2001. In the work of microfilming our staff spent thousands of hours piecing together disintegrating newspapers using "archive tape" so that they could be microfilmed. NDL staff members were onsite at Maryland and provided expert language and bibliographic assistance. Nichimy Corporation undertook the work of filming at College Park in special facilities built in the McKeldin Library. Altogether this was a true international effort and today two major components of the Prange are readily available for scholars and students?magazines, comprising over four million pages, and newspapers, comprising over two million pages.

The cataloging of 14,000 books during the 1960's had not continued due to insufficient staffing. During the 1990's we resumed efforts to catalog the collection of over 71,000 books and pamphlets, which are organized roughly by subject and author, but for which we do not have an item inventory. We are nearing the end of a two-year project to catalog all of the education book collection, but an enormous amount of cataloging remains before all these materials will be accessible to scholars. Cataloging and preservation -cleaning of books and pamphlets is now our highest priority for the Prange Collection and no less of a challenge than saving the magazines and newspapers. This work is labor intensive and requires a high level of technical and language knowledge of staff. Accordingly, it is very expensive work to do. Raising funds for this work is vital if we are to provide access to students and scholars internationally.

The University of Maryland has devoted significant fiscal and staff resources to the Prange Collection since it was first received in 1950. For the last 25 years, we have been aided in this work by the generous funding of many agencies. Since 1977 the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded several grants for the work of the Prange. The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnerships awarded significant funds in 1993. Since 1999 we have received grants from the Nippon Foundation. Over the years, all of these grants together total $3,000,000. The University has invested an equal amount operating the collection. The current international financial downturn has made it difficult to raise additional funds for our work. But we will not be deterred in our efforts to find the resources to preserve these collections for posterity.

One of the important results of all of this work has been that the microfilmed materials are now available in Japan at the NDL. Because of these microfilming and distribution projects, we are making these materials widely available in Japan. In addition, our publisher Proquest Inc. (a subsidiary of Bell & Howell Corp) markets the microfilm collections to libraries internationally making the Prange magazines and newspapers available to a worldwide audience. All of the royalty earnings we receive are re-invested in our current work of preservation. We recognize that we must also have an entrepreneurial spirit to be successful.

One of our near term goals must be closer cooperative work with NDL that builds on these past successes. We want to advance the level of awareness by means like this exhibit. We also must explore technological solutions such as digitizing. In particular, children's books present a wonderful opportunity. Recently, the International Children's Digital Library project has begun at Maryland in cooperation with the Library of Congress. Several books from the Prange Collection and in the near future also from the National Diet Library will be included in this project. But we also have begun conversations with the Project managers to develop an active role for the University of Maryland Libraries. Such efforts point the way to the future and the promise of providing more and better access. My University remains committed to this work. Clearly, the National Diet Library does as well and I remain confident that together we can succeed.