Page 182 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of Journal of Library Science in China 2016 Vol.42 181

generally have unique insights to the specific problem,and mostly are works written by either a
single person or two or three people who create a system of their own. They include single-volume
monographs,multi-volume monographs and monographic series,the major writing manner of
which is all writing,neither compiling nor editing. The clear concepts of academic books,academic
writings and academic monographs writing will help to count the species and extent of academic
books accurately. These statistics will not only be playing an important role in the budgets and
collection development of academic,research libraries and intelligence agencies,but also in the
publication administration,funds allocation from trust institutions and even in all kinds of database
construction and evaluation of academic books,etc. Meanwhile,this paper suggests that the core
concepts of humanities and social science research be very important and their definition should be
paid attention to like those in natural sciences. The research community may form some consensus
over term definition and publish the core concepts in the form of textbooks,reference books or
term specification lists in order to strengthen the research basis. Qualitative research is the basis
of quantitative research. Clarifying the concepts and terms and defining their connotation and
denotation are the foundation of obtaining more accurate data. Clear concept definition is very
important,but it should not be over-stressed,leading to ignorance of the fast-growing publication
practice. Publications are artifacts and the connotation and denotation of existing concepts are
constantly modified or summarized,therefore the positive interaction between theory and practice
will make the study of the concepts more meaningful.

An overview of the library history studies in Japan
FAN Fan①a *

Japanese scholars of library history have particular views on concept definition,research method
and research field. This paper discusses the library history materials kept in the Keio University
Library,including the first library journal in Japan titled The Toheki,and the newest Library
History textbook published in 2014. And in addition to printed books and journals,this paper also
refers to digital materials issued by related associations and organizations.
For research theories,Japanese library history scholars paid more attention to discussing the
research method and division,such as Gonnai Takei’s study on history of library and library
science,Hiroshi Kawai’s views on history of library,Library Science and library ideas,and
Tarou Miura’s summary of studies on library history in Japan from 2002 to 2007. For research
contents,Japanese scholars started their studies with the library history,then the research contents
were refined into the history of Library Science,ideas,movements,services,collections and
biographies of librarians. For research basis,there are plenty of material on library history,which

* Correspondence should be addressed to FAN Fan,Email:ffan@pku.edu.cn,ORCID:0000-0002-2124-9177