Searching Japanese Databases and Catalogs: Starting Points

Google Scholar searches books, articles, dissertations, research and conference papers, and more, available on the web, in Google Books, as citations, in subscription databases, and in institutional repositories. It can be helpful for finding whether journals are available electronically and searching for lesser-known research bulletins in Japan. It also features "related citations" which allow you to explore other similar resources, and links directly to PennText when an article is available to you via Penn.

The NDL Search (National Diet Library) searches a variety of the NDL's holdings, including books, journals, newspapers, digital collections, legislative information, and children's literature. It provides a single search for all resource types, or you can choose to limit to a certain type.

Franklin is the University of Pennsylvania's online catalog. Start your search here if you want to obtain a book, journal, or electronic resource at Penn. You can search in Japanese or English, by keyword, author, title, journal title, subject, and more. In addition, you can browse by subject and call number.

Borrow Direct is a loan system including Ivy League universities and the University of Chicago. Subject searching in Borrow Direct can provide information about books not available at Penn but easily obtainable (within several business days). It helps to expand a subject-based search beyond Penn's immediate holdings.

E-ZBorrow is a loan system including over 60 academic libraries in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. Subject searching in E-ZBorrow can provide information about books not available at Penn but easily obtainable (within several business days). It helps to expand a subject-based search beyond Penn's immediate holdings.

Worldcat is a union catalog of Western and some Japanese libraries (NDL and Waseda). It will display which libraries hold specific books, and provides a Franklin link for books owned by Penn. An OCLC number, available on Worldcat, is helpful for Inter-Library Loan staff to retrieve books.

This system provides access to bibliographic information about books and other materials held by OCLC libraries (largely in the West).

CiNii Books is a union catalog of Japanese library holdings. For some books, it includes tables of contents and other content summaries. It provides links to records in other databases as well, such as Webcat Plus and National Diet Library OPAC.

Indexing (since 1861) and abstracting (since 1980) for doctoral-level dissertations completed at North American universities. Page images or fulltext of all available dissertations - including Penn dissertations - from 1997 to present, with some earlier dissertations. Dissertations from selected European universities are also listed. Selected master's theses are included since 1988.

A dissertation search service from the NII, including abstracts and tables of contents; also includes links to full text when available.

An article explaining how to find and access dissertations collected by the National Diet Library, both in print and digital.

IRDB searches across all participating institutional repositories in Japan, and provides full text of many materials. This includes dissertations and theses (although many only include abstracts), and also research and conference papers, working and white papers, software, and more.

NCC's comprehensive guide to doing research in Japan, covering a large number and variety of institutions there.