Abstract

10:15-10:45

Professor Toshihiko Kishi, Kyoto University. "The Asahi Newspaper Stock-Photo Vault and its Relation to the Use of the Linked Archive of Asian Post Cards."

The pre-war stock photos held by the Asahi Shimbun Osaka headquarters are over 70,000 items. In my presentation, I try to select the photos of "Mongolia" representation in Manchukuo from all photo data and analyze them in space-time method.

[Contents]

(1) Comparing information on how graphics and pictures are expressed and used internationally

(2) Examining the issue of censorship in visual materials

(3) Performing Statistical Analyses of Visual Works with Time and Space as the Axis―Especially Concerning “Mongol” Representation in Manchukuo

In addition, I would like to examine the effectiveness of our “Linked Archive of Asian Post Cards” in such analysis. Moreover, I think I would like to clear the characteristics of each of the photograph and the postcard, and their interrelationship as visual media.

 

10:45-11:15

Professor Paul Barclay, Lafayette College. Needs and Opportunities for Historical Research in Prewar Japanese Postcards: The Case for Institutional Cooperation and Digital Archiving

 

1:10-1:40

Professor Akihiro Kameda, Kyoto University. Introduction to IIIF, Outline of Cultural Materials, and Progress on the Linked Archive Project.

Linked Archive of Asian Postcards (LAAP) is the gateway for three institutions' websites.
I introduce functions and the background technology of LAAP.
1.  Each image is (or will be) provided in the framework called IIIF.
IIIF enables each researcher to remix collections or annotate a part of images in a standardized manner. The standardized framework enables us to share open source tools and more autonomous construction of the federated database.
2. Federated search based on shared metadata.
With minimum requirements of the format, shared metadata enables us to construct a federated keyword search. Shared metadata style federation has some advantages over API-based and Linked Data federation, which were formerly tried and implemented partly.
3. Advanced search interfaces.
OCM category information enables us to classify postcards from many aspects, place names enable us to map postcards, and various time information enables us to browse postcards in a chronological table. Not all the postcards have those metadata, but showing the macroscopic view in many ways shed new light on the postcard collection and encourage researchers to add lacked metadata. Some future works including automatic tagging of OCM and recommendation of related postcards will be addressed in the last part.
 

1:40-2:10

Dr. Nishioka Chifumi, Kyoto University Library. An Example of IIIF Implementation: Possibilities for the Linked Archive of Asian Post Cards.

In these years, a lot of libraries and museums have adopted IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), which promotes mutual use of images among institutions. In 2017, Kyoto University Library Network has participated in the IIIF consortium. In this talk, we first present examples of IIIF implementations in Kyoto University Library.

Especially, we focus on the Digital Fujikawa (http://www.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/rdl/digital_fujikawa/en/), which provides a comprehensive view of the Fujikawa collection (a collection of old Eastern medical books) using IIIF. We show an influence of the Digital Fujikawa on usage of books.

In addition, we show a log analysis method to measure the image usage and to visualize the analysis result, which can be applicable to Linked Archive of Asian Post Cards. In IIIF-compatible digital collections, images are retrieved via IIIF Image API, where regions of images are specified. Thus, it is possible to investigate the detailed image usage by examining which regions of images have been requested. Specifically, we employ the number of accesses to each pixel as a metric and visualize the result by heat maps. Since a pixel is the smallest unit that composes an image, we enable a fine-grained analysis. The analysis method can be applied to to research platform, in which analysis results show regions that have been already examined by collaborators.

 

2:10-2:40

Susan Tayler, Harvard University.  "“Wish you were there?” Teaching the Japanese Empire through Postcards"

How do we encourage students to delve into this collection, when other images of this historical period are easily accessible through an image search? How to we facilitate students’ working with primary sources digitally? This presentation briefly introduces institutional history of the Manchukuo/Manchuguo postcards in the Harvard Yenching Library, before turning to a discussion of using postcards as pedagogical tools in the classroom, exploring Omeka as a curational tool and ideas for teaching students to read “with and against the grain of the archive.”

This presentation will give thought to how postcards can be framed conceptually, such as artifacts of print capitalism or personal mementos, to allow students to grapple with questions of public tastes and aesthetics of the market, subjective experiences of the image, as well as questions of what documents are cared for and survive. Assembled in academic collections, they can serve as a corpus of documentary evidence, not only of the places and people they depict, but also the companies, publishers, and the particular gaze that informed their production. Since postcards had their heyday in the early 20 th century, the ways and routes that they were channeled through into academic collections – public and private – are also important to trace, since they can be seen as another process of sorting and curating that shaped the body of a collection that scholars can now query with digital tools. Finally, I consider case studies drawn from teaching to position the postcards in the latest step in a chain of meaning-making that runs from the creation of an image, to printing, selling and buying, inscribing and posting, receiving and reading, reselling and collecting, acquisition, cataloging and to reinterpretation. I will offer thoughts on using postcards in the classroom on, including ideas of how to structure discussions around postcards, sharing a sample annotation assignment and reflecting on results.

3:00-3:15

Feng-en Tu, Harvard University. "Manchukuo and the East Asian Maps Project at the Harvard-Yenching Library"