About NII

History

Main Events

Month/year Event
October 1973 Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture proposes an "Improved Circulation System for Academic Information" in the Third Report (Basic Policies for the Promotion of Scholarship) of the Science Council.
May 1976 Research Center for Library and Information Science (RCLIS) is established at the University of Tokyo.
November 1978 "A New Plan for Academic Information Systems" is presented to the Science Council by the Minister of Education, Science, Sports and Culture. The Science Council issues a response in January 1980.
April 1983 Center for Bibliographic Information is established at the University of Tokyo, with the reorganization of the Research Center for Information and Library Science.
December 1984 The NACSIS-CAT catalog information service is launched.
April 1986 National Center for Science Information Systems (NACSIS) is established, with the reorganization of the Center for Bibliographic Information, the University of Tokyo.
April 1987 The Science Information NETwork (SINET) is launched.
April 1987 The NACSIS-IR information search service is launched.
April 1988 Email service is launched.
January 1989 International connection between SINET and US (National Science Foundation: NSF)
January 1990 International connection between SINET and the UK (British Library: BL)
April 1992 The Inter-Library Loan (ILL) System is launched.
April 1992 The Internet backbone (SINET) is launched.
November 1993 Start of mutual access to databases through gateways with the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology (JICST)
April 1994 Start of ILL service with the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC)
November 1994 Chiba Annex (Inage-ku, Chiba City) is built.
October 1995 International connection between SINET and Thailand
April 1996 Start of ILL service with the National Diet Library
March 1997 International Seminar House for Advanced Studies, Inose Lodge (Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture) is established.
April 1997 Electronic Library Service is launched.
December 1997 An Advisory Panel on a Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field is established by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture.
January 1998 A proposal entitled "Promoting Computer Science Research" is published by the Science Council of Japan, calling for the establishment of a core institution for inter-university research in informatics.
March 1998 Advisory Panel on a Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field issues its report.
April 1998 Coordination Office is established for the Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field; committee is formed in May.
March 1999 Coordinating Committee of the Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field issues its report.
April 1999 Preparatory Office is established for the Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field; committee is formed in May.
July 1999 Preparatory Committee of the Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field issues its interim report.
February 2000 Operations move to the National Center of Sciences (Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo).
March 2000 Preparatory Committee of the Core Institution for Scientific Research in the Information Field issues its final report.
April 2000 National Institute of Informatics (NII) is established, with the reorganization of NACSIS and assumption of its functions.
January 2002 SuperSINET is launched.
April 2002 Ph.D. Program in Informatics is established in the Department of Informatics, Graduate University for Advanced Studies.
April 2002 GeNii (NII Academic Contents Portal) is released.
April 2002 Japan-U.S. document delivery service is launched.
June 2002 Intersystem linkage of catalogs with RLG in the U.S. is launched.
September 2002 Research Planning and Promotion Strategy Office is founded.
October 2002 International Course is established within Ph.D. Program in Informatics.
October 2002 Start of joint construction of meta-databases
January 2003 Global Liaison Office is formed.
April 2003 Initiation of Project to Improve Infrastructure for International Circulation of Scholarly Information
April 2004 NII begins a new chapter as a member of the new Inter-University Research Institute Corporation/Research Organization of Information and Systems.
April 2005 Official service of GeNii (the NII Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator) is launched.
June 2007 Science Information NETwork3 (SINET3) is launched.
April 2009 NII Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator (CiNii) and the KAKEN database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research are revamped. Japanese Institutional Repositories Online (JAIRO) is officially launched.
February 2011 First NII Shonan Meeting takes place.
April 2011 Science Information NETwork4 (SINET4) is launched.
April 2011 Library Liaison Office is established.
November 2011 CiNii Books is launched.
April 2012 Japanese Institutional Repositories Online Cloud (JAIRO-Cloud) is launched.
October 2015 CiNii Dissertations is launched.
April 2016 Science Information NETwork4 (SINET5) is launched.
December 2018 Operation of Wide-area Data Collection Infrastructure (Mobile SINET) is launched.
March 2019 World's first round-the-globe ultra-high-speed 100 Gbps academic communications network is built.
December 2019 NII begins operating 400 Gbps Tokyo-Osaka link of SINET5.
October 2020 Kashiwa Annex is established in Kashiwa City, Chiba Pref.
February 2021 GakuNin RDM is officially launched.
March 2021 JAIRO Cloud (WEKO3) prior migration is completed.
June 2021 GakuNin LMS is officially launched.
November 2021 Japan Data Catalog for the Humanities and Social Sciences (JDCat) is launched.
April 2022 Science Information NETwork (SINET6) is launched.
April 2022 Scientific Research Digital Platform begins full-scale operation.
January 2023 New catalog information service (NACSIS-CAT/ILL) starts operating.

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