Message from the Director-General
Director-General of the Kyoto University Library Network
Katsuya Nagamori, Ph. D.
The mission of the Kyoto University Library Network, as part of the academic information infrastructure, is to support research and educational activities at Kyoto University, and to contribute to the academic community at home and abroad. To this end, our tasks are to collect and preserve academic resources as intellectual assets shared by all humankind, to guarantee access to the latest research information, and to actively disseminate research results.
As the research and educational environment at universities is rapidly changing, university libraries are also expected to play a role that responds to the times in the field of scholarly communication. Kyoto University adopted the Kyoto University Open Access Policy in academic year 2015, making academic papers and other research results by the university's faculty members available online, in principle, via the Kyoto University Research Information Repository, KURENAI. In addition, a fund was established to promote digitization and online access to valuable classical materials held by Kyoto University, and the Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive has been open to the public since academic year 2017.
The tasks for the latter half of the Kyoto University Library Network Future Vision and Strategy 2020-2027 include: to build a leading model for the realization of immediate open access to academic papers and other research results; to expand support services for the research data management and sharing, in accordance with the Kyoto University Policy on Research Data Management and Sharing, formulated in academic year 2019; and to restructure the library's services and operations to transform them toward the realization of a digital library in the post-COVID-19 era. For all of these issues, cooperation among the many libraries and reading rooms within the university that make up the Library Network, as well as with related departments within the university, and with other universities and institutions, both domestic and international, will be essential. We ask for your understanding and cooperation in the future endeavors of the Library Network.
