NCC is delighted to publish Professor Susanna Fessler's Japanese Research and Bibliographic Methods for undergraduates with a Creative Commons non-commercial share alike license. The course is freely downloadable by chapter or as a whole, and may be modified to local instructional needs. Please see the full release and course summary below:

For Immediate Release from the NCC

The North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) is delighted to announce the online publication of Japanese Research and Bibliographic Methods created by Professor Susanna Fessler of the University at Albany.

Professor Fessler, who has taught JapaneseResearch and Bibliographic Methods to undergraduates for more than a decade, has given NCC permission to host the 25-lesson course freely on NCC’s Website using a Creative Commons license. The curriculum teachesundergraduates the essentials of conducting research in Japanese studies, and should provide students with the skills that meet most general education requirements for information literacy competency.

Japanese Research and Bibliographic Methods is a complete course from syllabus to final exam, appropriate for students who have had at least one year of Japanese language study. The 25-lesson curriculum includes lectures, readings, and homework assignments that expose students to a variety of resources and skills. Professor Fessler has continuously adapted the course to evolving technology, changing topics of interest, and the constantly shifting repertoire of digital information.

The NCC is happy to host the entire curriculum for Japanese Research and Bibliographic Methods online using a Creative Commons license that allows content creators like Dr. Fessler to keep the rights to their work, while enabling others to freely use and edit the content under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/) license. To ensure the ongoing quality of instruction using this freely downloadable curriculum, educators are asked to register their use, and exams will be made available only to those with institutional affiliations. NCC will supplement the curriculum with information literacy resources and work to keep content fresh and current. To assist with this process, instructors will be asked to provide course evaluations, and to make suggestions for future additions and modifications to the curriculum. Instructors are also welcome to contribute links to other materials, of their own, or that they recommend, for linking to the course website.

The curriculum is available at http://guides.nccjapan.org/infolitforundergrads. Please see the brief summary of course organization and chapter contents, below.

Please also visit NCC’s Website at http://guides.nccjapan.org/homepage to make use of other NCC services that provide access to visual images and digital resources from Japan, an interlibrary loan network of 250 institutions in North America and Japan, grants for the development of Japanese language collections, and guides for scholars and students planning research and study in Japan.

The development of such a course was recommended at NCC's Third Decade Conference (March, 2010) and its publication on the NCC Website grows for NCC's Team-Building Workshop (September 2011). Partial funding for those programs and for development of NCC's Website came from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Japan-US Friendship Commission, and the Toshiba International Foundation. This course was originally created and taught at the University at Albany within their East Asian Studies Department: http://www.albany.edu/eas/.


Japanese Research and Bibliographic Methods Created by Professor Susanna Fessler, University at Albany

Now freely available on the NCC Website at http://guides.nccjapan.org/infolitforundergrads

A Brief Summary of Course Organization and Chapter Content:

The first half of the course focuses on using libraries and key reference tools in Japanese studies. These include navigating databases, using kanji dictionaries, understanding different systems of Romanization, and correctly using bilingual citations.

The second half of the course focuses on constructing a thesis, writing for a scholarly audience, and research within specific disciplines central to the field of Japanese studies. Students apply the knowledge gained in class to create an annotated bibliography as their final project. For many undergraduates this course is the first time they have been expected to apply their language skills to conducting research in Japanese.

There are 25 lessons, each with course readings, power point slides, scans of important reference works with annotations, and homework assignments. Accompanying documentation includes a midterm, final exam, and a final project. Each comes with sample versions and rubrics. Each lesson or the entire curriculum can do downloaded from the NCC Website. Allmaterials may be freely edited and tailored to local instructional needs.

Lessons:

◦01: Class Introduction
◦02: Word Processing in Japanese (inputting text in MS Word, including furigana and macrons)
◦03: Navigating the Library (where Japanese resources are typically located)
◦04: Databases (Project Muse, JSTOR, Bibliography of Asian Studies, WorldCat, etc.)
◦05: Radicals (the traditional Kangxi system and how it works)
◦06: Kanji (all about kanji, from soup to nuts)
◦07: Online Dictionaries (including apps for handheld devices)
◦08: Romanization (various systems, with a focus on Hepburn)
◦09: Simplification (of both kanji and the kana orthography)
◦10: Calligraphy (the basic forms; the importance of stroke order)
◦11: Types of Dictionaries (the history of dictionaries, starting in China)
◦12: Morohashi's Dictionary (大漢和辞典; how it’s organized, what one finds in it)
◦13: Citations in Japanese (how to read a Japanese colophon and cite a Japanese text in English)
◦14: Bibliographies (overview of annotated bibliographies and the final course project)
◦15: Writing Papers (not Japan-specific, but still important!)
◦16: Eras & Periodization (large spans of time in East Asia)
◦17: Chronologies (medium spans of time in East Asia, including the sexagenary cycles & nengō)
◦18: Auspicious Days & Telling Time (small spans of time in traditional Japan)
◦19: Numbers & Units of Measure (including conversion from old to new measures)
◦20: Biographies & Names (the complexities of Japanese names, and how to master them)
◦21: Imperial Ranks (Heian court, plus a little Tokugawa bakufu material)
◦22: Literature Resources
◦23: Historical Resources
◦24: Geography Resources
◦25: Religion & Philosophy Resources

http://guides.nccjapan.org/infolitforundergrads

Victoria Lyon Bestor
Executive Director
North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources
Website: http://www.nccjapan.org/