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In This Week's News
Week of January 28 to February 3

Global Impact , Research:  Scientists create device capable of reading your mind (The State Column)

Off Campus:  University Waits to Learn When Ground Can be Broken for East Campus (College Park Patch)

Regional Issues:  UMD Business Expert: Maryland's Proposed Digital Goods Sales Tax Would be Difficult to Execute (Citybizlist Baltimore)

Campus Issues:  Maryland students spill their secrets (The Washington Post)

Global Impact , Research:  Terrorist Attack Map Shows Terrorism 'Hot Spots' Across U.S. (Huffington Post)

Regional Issues:  UMD 'Synthesis' center seeks to balance nature, people (The Baltimore Sun)

Preserving the Modern History of Japan
A Joint Project of the University of Maryland and National Diet Library of Japan

On May 2, 2005, Mr. Takao Kurosawa , the Librarian of the National Diet Library of Japan, and President C.D. Mote Jr. signed a Memorandum of Understanding that officially began the $1.5 million project. Employing cutting edge technologies, initial efforts will focus on the digitization and microfilming of 8,000 children's books (below left), a graphically rich and particularly rare subcollection.

"The Prange Collection at the University of Maryland is a unique, extraordinary, and invaluable documentation of a pivotal time in the 20 th century," says President C.D.Mote Jr. "This collection is our most important and our most fragile of all. We are honored to join in partnership with the National Diet Library in a special agreement to ensure this authentic documentation of post-World War II Japan will be preserved for all time."

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The contents of the Prange Collection once constituted the files of the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD), an operating unit of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) Press, Pictorial and Broadcast Division. Between 1945 and 1949, Japanese publications were subject to strict censorship implemented by the CCD. When CCD examiners identified violations, censorship action was taken. The Collection contains approximately 600,000 pages of censorship documents.

The Prange Collection offers a window on a pivotal period in Japanese history, one of renewal and reformation in the aftermath of war. It sheds light on evolving cultural and social customs, the state of publishing and mass media, and the workings of censorship. For this reason, scholars from around the world visit the Collection to do research.

In collaboration, the National Diet Library and the University of Maryland have microfilmed the Prange magazine and newspaper collections, a total of 6 million pages. This new project will preserve the final and largest component of the Prange Collection, the books.

Funding to support the critical work of preservation, cataloging, and other activities that guarantee accessibility is made possible by The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Nippon Foundation, the National Diet Library, and the University of Maryland.

Information about the Signing Ceremony

WHEN: Monday, May 2, 2005

WHERE: Lobby of the Main Administration Building at the University of Maryland

TIME: 5:30 p.m.

MEDIA: Parking is available in the Visitors Center on Rt. 1 in College Park (first right after passing the main entrance to the University) and is free after 4 p.m. Easy walk to the Main Administration Building.

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