ICC Tokyo

[Maureen Donovan]

>
>
> [For those who don't know the ICC, their homepage, with a brief
> self-description etc., can be found at http://www.ntticc.or.jp. The ICC
> publishes a magazine called "InterCommunication" - "A journal exploring
> the frontiers of art and technology", and some of the articles are
> available on-line, both in Japanese and in English translation.]
>

An historical aside:

As many of you are aware, the KineJapan mailing list evolved from a small
discussion list called kineclub at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu which was
established to support development of the Kinema Club web site
(http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html).

What is not so well known, though, is that the origin of Kinema Club can be
traced back to a posting that I made on the Electronic Frontier of Japan
mailing list  in the summer of 1994.  That was in response to Michel
Bauwens' (from Wave magazine in Belgium) request for interesting news
related to the Internet in Japan for Wave's special issue on Japan (No. 6
-- published Nov. 1994).  I sent information about ICC's InterCommunication
to the list -- and, as a result, he included a note (in Dutch) about
InterCommunication in  that issue on p.116.

Markus Nornes contacted me off-list about my response to Bauwens and we
started an e-mail discussion which led to a meeting in Fall 1994 at an
Asian cinema conference in Athens, Ohio at which he, I and several other
people (Aaron Gerow, Michael Raine, Sharon Hayashi, Joanne Izbicki, etc)
met and decided to put together a web site and mailing list on a computer
that I had at that time just obtained on grant money (Japan-US Friendship
Commission + US Dept of Ed Title II-A).

If anyone wonders why KineJapan and Kinema Club were established at Ohio
State University, now you know!  It can all be traced back to that
posting.....

As for InterCommunication, Ohio State University Libraries still subscribes
to the journal .  We have a complete set, starting from No. 0 (1992).  I
just checked the OCLC system and found that Harvard and SUNY-Brockport also
have it, although there are no details as to which issues they have.

The ICC web site has the tables of contents of InterCommunication
(http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic027/contents_e.html ) in both
Japanese and English.  Selected articles from early issues have been
republished there in an "internet edition" which is also in both languages.

I find InterCommunication to be a lively and interesting publication.  One
of my goals in selecting journals and books for Ohio State's Japanese
collection is to get things that will stimulate faculty and graduate
student research.  Another strategy is to collect Japanese language
publications that are not held by other libraries in the region.  On both
counts, InterCommunication is a valuable addition to our holdings.

As for the ICC's "electronic library," I have not visited the facility in
Tokyo yet, but the web site is really useful.  There is a lot of
information in both the matrix and the artists' database.   There seems to
be a commitment to adding "content" for the Web.  I appreciate that very
much --and hope that they will continue the good work.  The "interface" is
also nice -- creative and yet functional.  (Looks best on a big screen,
though -- some fonts are quite small.)

Maureen Donovan
KineJapan co-owner

*******************
Maureen H. Donovan,  Associate Professor / Japanese Studies Librarian
The Ohio State University Libraries
328 Main Library, Columbus OH 43210-1286 USA
Tel. 614-292-3502    *    Fax  614-292-1918   *    donovan.1 at osu.edu
East Asian Libraries Cooperative WWW http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/
Editor, AsianDOC E-Newsletter http://asiandoc.lib.ohio-state.edu/
*******************