FOREASt has expanded!

I am excited to announce that FOREASt just acquired its own domain name and set up a new web site http://www.foreast.org.

The new web site provides more functionality for future development and makes it easier to manage existing content. Therefore, we have moved all the subject pages (Asia, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as well as Journals and Online Services) to the new site.  Please use the links on your left to find up-to-date subject lists — the lists on the top of this page have been taken down.

This current WordPress site will continue to exist as FOREASt’s forum for free discussions of the open resources FOREASt has collected. You are more than welcome to comment on individual resources or recommend new resources. Only your first post on the forum needs to be approved (to prevent spammers). Anonymous posts are allowed, too.

Please take a look at our new site and tell us what you think. Thanks!

~Tao

BBC Country Profiles

BBC Country Profiles.

Developed by BBC News, the full profiles “provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions.” (BBC News)

This resource is also listed as one of the best free reference web sites in 2009 by the RUSA Machine-Assisted Reference Section of the American Library Association. According to the review, each “profile includes an overview, map, facts, and current leaders. A media overview provides information on the press, television, radio, news agencies, and number of Internet users. Links provided on the side of the profile connect to the latest news and key stories, BBC links, background articles, related Internet sites and video and audio clips from the BBC archives. Additional features include timelines, recent news links, background articles, Internet sites, and BBC archive video and audio clips. Information on over 20 key international organizations is also included” (RUSA-MARS, ALA).

What do you think of this resource?

Nukata Bunko Database, Toho University 東邦大学額田文庫デジタルコレクション

Nukata Bunko Database, Toho University 東邦大学額田文庫デジタルコレクション.

Based on the Nukata Bunko, a book collection that the Nukata family accumulated over a period of four generations, this resource provides fulltext images of 43  Japanese medical books (in 275 volumes) that were printed from 17th to 19th century. It was made available by Toho University in 2009.

What do you think of this resource?

HaithiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust Digital Library

University of Michigan Library recently announced that fulltext search is now available across the entire HathiTrust Digital Library of more than 4.6 million volumes, including materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK). Jidong Yang, Head of Asia Library at the University of Michigan tested the fulltext search capability and found that the OCR accuracy for CJK materials is low. Also according to Jidong, “searching by Latin and even Cyrillic scripts seems to work pretty well. So it’s definitely a useful tool for searching western studies on East Asia. Compared with Google Book, Hathi has a more library-OPAC-like catalog (which is closely related to the new Mirlyn, Michigan’s VuFind-based OPAC) and thus provides a good alternative for those who often get lost in Google’s search interface.” (Jidong Yang, eastlib message, November 20, 2009)

For more info about Hathi see Large Scale Search Blog & Twitter.

What do you think of this resource?

Nichibunken Databases

Nichibunken Databases.

Developed by Nichibunken, the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, this page lists a variety of useful databases related to Japanese studies, including full texts, images, biographies, bibliographies, directories, and indexes, covering a wide range of subjects such as history, literature, art, geography, and social sciences.

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FOREASt at 10,000

Returning to work this morning, I am excited to find that the page view counter on FOREASt is approaching 10,000. I want to thank all the contributors and visitors as we are reaching this major milestone.

Best,

Tao

JAIRO: Japanese Institutional Repositories Online

JAIRO: Japanese Institutional Repositories Online.

Developed by the National Institute of Informatics, JAIRO provides integrated search of over 100 Japanese institutional repositories, including over 500,000 full text items, such as department bulletin paper, journal article, thesis or dissertations, etc.

What do you think of this resource?

Academic Research Database Repository 学術研究データベース・リポジトリ

Academic Research Database Repository 学術研究データベース・リポジトリ.

Developed by the National Institute of Informatics, this resource provides integrated search service for 29 subject-specific indexes or bibliographies.

What do you think of this resource?

Webcat Plus

Webcat Plus.

Developed by the National Institute of Informatics, Webcat Plus “helps you find out-of-print books that are in the collections of university libraries and other institutions”, covering a total of over 12 million records. For books published after 1986, table of contents, related advertisement, or book cover may be provided.

What do you think of this resource?

CiNii – NII Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator

CiNii – NII Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator.

Developed by the National Institute of Informatics, CiNii is a tool to find articles published in Japanese academic society journals and university research bulletins. It also incorporates the National Diet Library’s Zasshi Kiji Sakuin (Japanese Periodicals Index) database.

NII states that CiNii has three main features:

• “Large volume of article information – CiNii incorporates 12 million articles. Articles from different databases that have duplicate information are displayed as a single article.
• Access to full text documents – Access to full text documents is possible with 3.2 million of the 12 million articles currently available on CiNii. CiNii enables you to search desired articles and obtain the full text of such articles. Through joint collaborations, we also provide links to navigate to full text documents, etc. on other services.
• Displays citation information – Based on this citation information (References / Cited by), users can track down related articles.”

Please note that some full text articles are free, while other require payment.

What do you think of this resource?

Umehara Korean Archaeology Image Database 梅原考古資料画像データベース

Umehara Archaeology Image Database 梅原考古資料画像データベース. Also in Japanese.

Developed by the Toyo Bunko, this database provides images of thousands of artifacts excavated by Umehara Sueji 梅原末治 in the Korean Peninsula in the 1920s and 1930s. Materials from today’s North Korea are probably the most important, given the current difficulty of entering North Korea.

Related print resource: 『梅原考古資料目録　朝鮮之部』（東洋学術協会，1966年）.

What do you think of this resource?