Reunion of medical books as Digital Fujikawa over 70 years after its original owner's death

Kyoto University Library Network and Keio University Media Center concluded an agreement on the Joint Project on Digital Unification of Fujikawa Collection (Digital Fujikawa) and launched an integrated website that virtually brings together the holdings of both universities in one place by using the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) protocol on September 28, 2018.

Fujikawa Collection was built by Yu Fujikawa (1865-1940), who taught the history of medicine at Kyoto Imperial University Medical College and Keio University School of Medicine and authored History of Medicine in Japan (Nihon igakushi) in 1904 and History of Disease in Japan (Nihon ekibyoshi) in 1912. In order to write these and his other works, he had collected Japanese and Chinese medical books published between the Heian era and the beginning of the Meiji era and Western medical books in Japanese translation after the middle of the Edo period, mainly around the end of the Edo period.

This project intends to contribute to the development of the research in the history of medicine in Japan by providing the comprehensive view of Fujikawa Collection that has been physically divided into several parts, each currently held by a different institution. This is also a showcase of digital unification utilizing IIIF features, for which we plan to increase digital images available and participating institutions and develop new functions, in order to progress this project from the current trial phase to a full-scale phase by the end of academic year 2020/2021.

[Website]
Digital Fujikawa
http://www.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/rdl/digital_fujikawa/index.html

[Available records] (As of September 28, 2018)
Kyoto University:    4,710 records
Keio University:    450 records (More than 1,000 records to be added in the future)

[Related websites]
Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive
　Top site:    https://rmda.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en
　Fujikawa Collection:    https://rmda.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/collection/fujikawa
Digital Collections of Keio University Libraries
　Top site:    http://dcollections.lib.keio.ac.jp/en
　Fujikawa Collection:    http://dcollections.lib.keio.ac.jp/en/koisho
International Image Interoperability Framework    https://iiif.io/

[Contacts]
Kyoto University Main Library (Library Planning Division)
　Tel:    +81-(0)75-753-2691
　E-mail:    gazo660[a]mail2.adm.kyoto-u.ac.jp (Please replace "[a]" with "@")
Keio University Public Relations Office
　Tel:    +81-(0)3-5427-1541
　E-mail:    m-pr[a]adst.keio.ac.jp (Please replace "[a]" with "@")