City of Heroes
City of Heroes was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCSOFT. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004, in Europe by NCsoft Europe on February 4, 2005, with English and French servers. Twenty-three free major updates for City of Heroes were released before its shutdown; the final live update, "Where Shadows Lie", was released on May 31, 2012. On August 31, 2012, NCsoft terminated its Paragon Studios development team, ending all production on City of Heroes with the last day of services on November 30, 2012. In the game, players created super-powered player characters that could team up with others to complete missions and fight criminals belonging to various gangs and organizations in the fictional Paragon City. On October 31, 2005, the game's first sequel, City of Villains, was launched, allowing players to play as supervillains; the stand-alone expansion pack did not require City of Heroes to run, but if the user had both games, content was added to the City of Heroes side of game play.
On July 16, 2008, NCsoft merged the two games' content together. Thus, a player who only owned City of Heroes could now play City of Villains, vice versa. Prior to this, a purchase was required to access either game's content, but they were linked by one account and subscription fee. On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced their purchase of the City of Heroes/City of Villains intellectual property and transitioned the staff from Cryptic Studios to a new location in Mountain View, California, to continue development of the game; the new studio on April 14, 2009, became Paragon Studios, which shared credit with Cryptic Studios for the development work. This led to City of Heroes becoming available for download on Steam, along with other NCsoft titles, on April 22, 2009. On October 30, 2008, NCsoft announced a partnership with Transgaming Technologies in order to bring both City of Heroes and City of Villains and all 13 expansions to Mac OS X; the City of Heroes: Going Rogue expansion's release was announced on May 11, 2009.
This part of the game centered on the alternate reality of Praetoria and featured a new alignment system allowing players characters to shift allegiances between Heroes and Villains, giving characters access to both Paragon City of City of Heroes and the Rogue Isles of City of Villains. Paragon Studios described this as " the shades of gray that lay between Heroes and Villains". Going Rogue was released on August 17, 2010, with pre-purchasers able to play on August 16. On June 20, 2011, Paragon Studios announced that they were going to switch to a hybrid subscription model called City of Heroes: Freedom, adding in a free-to-play game model. Special models for former subscribers would be termed Premium Players, current subscribers would become VIP players, who would gain access to all the content in the various upcoming game updates. On August 31, 2012, Paragon Studios announced that it was being closed, City of Heroes would cease all billing and begin the process of shutting down the service.
The stated explanation for this move was a "realignment of company focus and publishing support". November 30, 2012, was listed as the official shutdown date of the game and the servers were turned off at midnight PST. Many players arrived en masse to express their continued protest and fond farewells, including messages of gratitude from the developers and moderators thanking their fans for their support and passion for the game. A variety of efforts got underway, led by players of the game, to keep the game operating past the announced date of closure, their efforts were unsuccessful, the game shut down as scheduled. Missing Worlds Media's president Nate Downes announced in September 2014 that he introduced an interest party who wanted to make a deal in reviving the game's intellectual property with NCSoft staff, which might enable the final version of the game to be released. No additional info was released as the involved parties were under an NDA; the effort did not succeed, due to reuse of Ghost Widow in Master X Master.
After creating their character and selecting a name, players could either begin play in an isolated tutorial zone, or skip the tutorial and begin in an open low-level zone. A character's level increased by earning experience points from defeating foes, completing Missions, exploring Zones returning to an NPC known as a Trainer. Benefits for rising in level included more Health, more Powers to choose for the character, more slots to allocate Enhancements to Powers, larger inventories for Inspirations and Salvage. If a player loses all of their Health, they could be revived through use of an item, by an ally's powers, or in one of the Hospitals on the map; the setting of the game, Paragon City for Heroes, was divided into different Zones by giant energy "War Walls", which were justified in the back story. Dangerous zones called "Hazard" or "Trial" zones, which teemed with larger groups of enemies, were marked in red on the in-game map and were much more dangerous than normal zones; the Villains' setting, the Rogue Isles, consisted of islands connected by a network of ferries and helicopters.
A few zones were accessible to both villains. Praetoria, for characters created in the Going Rogue update, lacked War Walls, allowing more or less free movement between areas. Players moved around the zones by jogging or using a minor sp
Ball-jointed doll
A ball-jointed doll is any doll, articulated with ball and socket joints. In contemporary usage when referring to modern dolls, when using the acronyms BJD or ABJD, it refers to modern Asian ball-jointed dolls; these are cast in polyurethane synthetic resin, a hard, dense plastic, the parts strung together with a thick elastic. They are predominantly produced in South Korea and China; the BJD style has been influenced by anime. They range in size from about 60 centimetres for the larger dolls, 40 cm for the mini dolls, all the way down to 10 cm the smallest BJDs. BJDs are intended for adult collectors and customizers, they are made to be easy to customize, by painting, changing the eyes and wig, so forth. The modern BJD market began with Volks line of Super Dollfie in 1999. Super Dollfie and Dollfie are registered trademarks but are sometimes erroneously used as generic blanket terms to refer to all Asian BJDs regardless of manufacturer. Articulated dolls go back to at least 200 BCE, with articulated clay and wooden dolls of ancient Greece and Rome.
The modern era ball-jointed doll history began in Western Europe in the late 19th century. From the late 19th century through the early 20th century French and German manufacturers made bisque dolls with strung bodies articulated with ball-joints made of composition: a mix of pulp, sawdust and similar materials; these dolls are now collectible antiques. During the 1930s the German artist Hans Bellmer created dolls with ball-joints and used them in photography and other surrealistic artwork. Bellmer introduced the idea of artful doll photography, which continues today with Japanese doll artists, as well as BJD hobbyists. Influenced by Bellmer and the rich Japanese doll tradition, Japanese artists began creating strung ball-jointed art dolls; these are made of bisque and very tall, sometimes as tall as 120 cm. These dolls are purely intended as art, not for play or the hobby level of collecting associated with dolls, they cost several thousand dollars, up to several hundred thousand dollars for older collectible dolls from famous artists.
The art doll community is still active in Japan and artists release artbooks with photographs of their dolls. The history of commercially produced Asian resin BJDs began in 1999 when the Japanese company Volks created the Super Dollfie line of dolls; the first Super Dollfie were 57 cm tall, strung with elastic, ball-jointed, made of polyurethane resin. Super Dollfie were made to be customizable and to find a female market for Volks products. See further: Super Dollfie History; the earliest Asian BJDs were influenced by the anime aesthetic. The early, prominent BJD companies Volks, Cerberus Project with the Delf line, as well as the Japanese artist Gentaro Araki with the U-noa line, all have backgrounds in anime-style resin figure kits. Around 2002 -- 2003, South Korean companies started producing BJDs. Customhouse and Cerberus Project were among the first Korean BJDs companies, since the Korean market has expanded with many more; the earliest Chinese produced. Some were direct recasts, while others were slight modifications of Korean BJDs.
These knockoffs were made of plaster, low quality resin or polystone — a mix of resin and a filler material like sand. They were low in price, but not durable; the first Chinese company to release their own original BJD sculpts in high quality polyurethane resin was Dollzone. Their dolls hit the market in 2006. Since several other Chinese companies followed suit, putting their own BJD creations on the international market; the first American company to produce a BJD with more of an American aesthetic influence was Goodreau Doll in 2007. Modern Asian BJDs are intended for adult collectors and customizers and range in price from US$100 to over US$1000, their body elements are cast in polyurethane resin and held together by thick elastic cords, making them articulated and poseable. BJDs tend to follow a distinctly Asian view in their aesthetics, but the designs are diverse and range from anime-inspired to hyper-realistic. LA Weekly said Asian BJDs are "often strangely human looking" while NPR described them as "eerily lifelike."
Most are anatomically correct and have proportionally large heads, big eyes and comparatively large feet, contrasted with fashion dolls like Barbie, are capable of standing on their own, without a stand or other support. BJDs are customizable. Wigs and eyes are easy to remove and replace, as well as heads and feet. A doll may be a hybrid of parts from different companies; some BJD owners or customizers re-shape existing parts by sanding them or applying epoxy putty to them. The resin material is easier to paint than the softer and more slick vinyl used for other types of dolls. BJD face paint is referred to as a face-up, to note that it's not just make-up, but all the facial features that are painted and customized, including eyebrows and blushing to enhance features. Face-ups and body blushing are done with watercolor pencils, acrylic paint — applied with a regular brush or an airbrush — or soft pastels, coated with a sprayed-on layer of clear matte sealant for protection. BJD face-ups from large companies, are always painted by hand, it takes considerable skill to execute detailed, professional face-ups.
There is a sizeable international community dedicated to BJDs. The largest English language BJD internet community, Den of Angels, has over 43,000 members as of February 2016. Enthusias
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research university in West Lafayette and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money to establish a college of science and agriculture in his name; the first classes were held on September 1874, with six instructors and 39 students. The main campus in West Lafayette offers more than 200 majors for undergraduates, over 69 masters and doctoral programs, professional degrees in pharmacy and veterinary medicine. In addition, Purdue has more than 900 student organizations. Purdue is a member of the Big Ten Conference and enrolls the second largest student body of any university in Indiana, as well as the fourth largest foreign student population of any university in the United States. In 1865, the Indiana General Assembly voted to take advantage of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862, began plans to establish an institution with a focus on agriculture and engineering.
Communities throughout the state offered their facilities and money to bid for the location of the new college. Popular proposals included the addition of an agriculture department at Indiana State University or at what is now Butler University. By 1869, Tippecanoe County’s offer included $150,000 from Lafayette business leader and philanthropist John Purdue, $50,000 from the county, 100 acres of land from local residents. On May 6, 1869, the General Assembly established the institution in Tippecanoe County as Purdue University, in the name of the principal benefactor. Classes began at Purdue on September 1874, with six instructors and 39 students. Professor John S. Hougham was Purdue’s first faculty member and served as acting president between the administrations of presidents Shortridge and White. A campus of five buildings was completed by the end of 1874. Purdue issued its first degree, a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, in 1875 and admitted its first female students that fall. Emerson E. White, the university’s president from 1876 to 1883, followed a strict interpretation of the Morrill Act.
Rather than emulate the classical universities, White believed Purdue should be an "industrial college" and devote its resources toward providing a liberal education with an emphasis on science and agriculture. He intended not only to prepare students for industrial work, but to prepare them to be good citizens and family members. Part of White's plan to distinguish Purdue from classical universities included a controversial attempt to ban fraternities; this ban was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court and led to White's resignation. The next president, James H. Smart, is remembered for his call in 1894 to rebuild the original Heavilon Hall "one brick higher" after it had been destroyed by a fire. By the end of the nineteenth century, the university was organized into schools of agriculture and pharmacy, former U. S. President Benjamin Harrison was serving on the board of trustees. Purdue's engineering laboratories included testing facilities for a locomotive and a Corliss steam engine, one of the most efficient engines of the time.
The School of Agriculture was sharing its research with farmers throughout the state with its cooperative extension services and would undergo a period of growth over the following two decades. Programs in education and home economics were soon established, as well as a short-lived school of medicine. By 1925 Purdue had the largest undergraduate engineering enrollment in the country, a status it would keep for half a century. President Edward C. Elliott oversaw a campus building program between the world wars. Inventor and trustee David E. Ross coordinated several fundraisers, donated lands to the university, was instrumental in establishing the Purdue Research Foundation. Ross's gifts and fundraisers supported such projects as Ross–Ade Stadium, the Memorial Union, a civil engineering surveying camp, Purdue University Airport. Purdue Airport was the country's first university-owned airport and the site of the country's first college-credit flight training courses. Amelia Earhart joined the Purdue faculty in 1935 as a consultant for these flight courses and as a counselor on women's careers.
In 1937, the Purdue Research Foundation provided the funds for the Lockheed Electra 10-E Earhart flew on her attempted round-the-world flight. Every school and department at the university was involved in some type of military research or training during World War II. During a project on radar receivers, Purdue physicists discovered properties of germanium that led to the making of the first transistor; the Army and the Navy conducted training programs at Purdue and more than 17,500 students and alumni served in the armed forces. Purdue set up about a hundred centers throughout Indiana to train skilled workers for defense industries; as veterans returned to the university under the G. I. Bill, first-year classes were taught at some of these sites to alleviate the demand for campus space. Four of these sites are now degree-granting regional campuses of the Purdue University system. Purdue's on-campus housing became racially desegregated in 1947, following pressure from Purdue President Frederick L. Hovde and Indiana Governor Ralph F. Gates.
After the war, Hovde worked to expand the academic opportunities at the university. A decade-long construction program emphasized research. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the university established programs in veterinary medicine, industrial management, nursing, as well as the first computer science department in the United States. Undergraduate humanities courses were strengthened
Chicago
Chicago the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450, it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area referred to as Chicagoland, the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States; the metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, the fourth largest in North America and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area. Located on the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed and grew in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, the city made a concerted effort to rebuild; the construction boom accelerated population growth throughout the following decades, by 1900 Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world.
Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and zoning standards, including new construction styles, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, the steel-framed skyscraper. Chicago is an international hub for finance, commerce, technology, telecommunications, transportation, it is the site of the creation of the first standardized futures contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade, which today is the largest and most diverse derivatives market gobally, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures. O'Hare International Airport is the one of the busiest airports in the world, the region has the largest number of U. S. highways and greatest amount of railroad freight. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, it ranked seventh in the entire world in the 2017 Global Cities Index; the Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products in the world, generating $680 billion in 2017. In addition, the city has one of the world's most diversified and balanced economies, not being dependent on any one industry, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.
Chicago's 58 million domestic and international visitors in 2018, made it the second most visited city in the nation, behind New York City's approximate 65 million visitors. The city ranked first place in the 2018 Time Out City Life Index, a global quality of life survey of 15,000 people in 32 cities. Landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Grant Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago's culture includes the visual arts, film, comedy and music jazz, soul, hip-hop and electronic dance music including house music. Of the area's many colleges and universities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago are classified as "highest research" doctoral universities. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams; the name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum and known more as ramps.
The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the eponymous wild "garlic" grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:...when we arrived at the said place called "Chicagou" which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region. The city has had several nicknames throughout its history such as the Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, the City of the Big Shoulders, which refers to the city's numerous skyscrapers and high-rises. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples; the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable arrived in the 1780s, he is known as the "Founder of Chicago".
In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area, to be part of Chicago was turned over to the United States for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn and rebuilt; the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis; the Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. Receiver of Public Monies; the City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city. As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States.
Chicago's first railway and Chicago Union Railroad, the Illi
Filk music
Filk music is a musical culture and community tied to science fiction/fantasy/horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has been active since the early 1950s, played since the mid-1970s; the term "filk" predates 1955. It is used as a noun: referring to the genre or to a filk song it can be used to refer to a gathering with the primary purpose of singing filk songs; such a gathering held in someone's home is called a housefilk "A filk of ___" refers to a filksong based on another song, using the same tune and but not similar structure of plot and/or lyrics. It may be a parody of the original, with content referring back to it, or it may be a contrafactum which reuses the music and the lyrical structure of the original, but with different words. Full appreciation of a parody requires familiarity with the original, but appreciation of a contrafactum may not; as a verb: To participate in filk singing, not as a planned or organized event, as in "The party guests filked." To write a filk music parody of an existing song, humorous or otherwise, as in "I filked'Hope Eyrie'."
When used in this way, "filk" does not imply that all song parodies are considered filk music, nor does it imply that all filk songs are parodies. Setting satirical or parody lyrics to established tunes is not the province of science fiction fandom: works of parody music such as those found in MAD Magazine or performed by Weird Al Yankovic have their own long-established traditions and history; as Interfilk's "What is it?" Page demonstrates, there is no consensus on the definition of filk. Attempts have been made to define filk based on various criteria. Filk has been defined as folk music with a science fiction or fantasy theme, but this definition is not exact. Filkers have been known to write filk songs about a variety of topics, including but not limited to tangentially related topics such as computers and cats. In addition, while the majority of filk songs are in the folk style, other styles such as blues and rock appear from time to time. Filk has been defined as what is sung or performed by the network of people who gathered to sing at science fiction/fantasy conventions.
This definition might be summarized as, "We can argue what it is until we're red or green or blue, but when filkers get together it's the thing we do." Yet another definition focuses on filking as a community of those who are interested in filk music and who form part of the social network self-identified with filking. As described in this article, the origins of filk in science fiction conventions and its current organization emphasizes the social-network aspect of filking; the social aspect of filk as contrasted with the "performer vs. audience" dichotomy of much of modern music was described in a speech by ethnomusicologist Dr. Sally Childs-Helton. By any of these definitions, filk is a form of music created from within science fiction and fantasy fandom performed late at night at science fiction conventions, though there are now dedicated filk conventions in Canada, England and the USA; the boundaries of filking are vague. For example, filking overlaps with the singing and music performed by participants in the Society for Creative Anachronism or at LARPs.
In keeping with the folk-culture roots of filk, the musical styles and topics of filk music are eclectic. While a plurality of filk is rooted in acoustic-instrument folk music, other pieces and artists draw inspiration from rock, a cappella vocal groups, or other styles; the hobbyist and itinerant nature of filk events gives some advantages to acoustic-vocal soloists and small groups, who need only carry a lightweight instrument or two and whose rehearsals do not need to balance scheduling logistics against regular work and other obligations. One of the few rock-style groups in filk has been Ookla the Mok, whose studio recordings use techniques common in modern rock; some styles of filk rely on sampling the original source material and integrating it into electronica and hip-hop music such as 76's Objects in Space and DJ Qbert's Wave Twisters. The range of topics in filk songs stems from its cultural roots in fandom. Many songs honor specific works in fantasy, or speculative fiction. Other songs are about science, computers, technology in general, or values related to technological change.
Yet others are about the culture including filk itself. Many filk songs are humorous. However, some common themes do not fall neatly into filk's science fiction origins; such topics include songs about cats, popular culture, politics. These are best explained as an outgrowth of filk as a folk culture, open in some respects to expansion by individual artists. A significant number of filk songs are parodies, whether in the original sense of re-using a tune or in the modern sense of humorous re-use; some are parodies of songs from popular culture, others are parodies of existing filk songs. Although parody is not the primary focus of the filk music culture, the proportion of parody songs found in filk is higher than in other musical cultures. One subtype of filk songs is one on themes of death and gloom; the term derives from the word "morose", as in "ose, even-more-ose". A further vari
National Diet Library
The National Diet Library is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the National Diet of Japan in researching matters of public policy; the library is similar in scope to the United States Library of Congress. The National Diet Library consists of two main facilities in Tōkyō and Kyōtō, several other branch libraries throughout Japan; the National Diet Library is the successor of three separate libraries: the library of the House of Peers, the library of the House of Representatives, both of which were established at the creation of Japan's Imperial Diet in 1890. The Diet's power in prewar Japan was limited, its need for information was "correspondingly small"; the original Diet libraries "never developed either the collections or the services which might have made them vital adjuncts of genuinely responsible legislative activity". Until Japan's defeat, the executive had controlled all political documents, depriving the people and the Diet of access to vital information.
The U. S. occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur deemed reform of the Diet library system to be an important part of the democratization of Japan after its defeat in World War II. In 1946, each house of the Diet formed its own National Diet Library Standing Committee. Hani Gorō, a Marxist historian, imprisoned during the war for thought crimes and had been elected to the House of Councillors after the war, spearheaded the reform efforts. Hani envisioned the new body as "both a'citadel of popular sovereignty'", the means of realizing a "peaceful revolution"; the Occupation officers responsible for overseeing library reforms reported that, although the Occupation was a catalyst for change, local initiative pre-existed the Occupation, the successful reforms were due to dedicated Japanese like Hani. The National Diet Library opened in June 1948 in the present-day State Guest-House with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes; the first Librarian of the Diet Library was the politician Tokujirō Kanamori.
The philosopher Masakazu Nakai served as the first Vice Librarian. In 1949, the NDL became the only national library in Japan. At this time the collection gained an additional million volumes housed in the former National Library in Ueno. In 1961, the NDL opened at its present location in Nagatachō, adjacent to the National Diet. In 1986, the NDL's Annex was completed to accommodate a combined total of 12 million books and periodicals; the Kansai-kan, which opened in October 2002 in the Kansai Science City, has a collection of 6 million items. In May 2002, the NDL opened a new branch, the International Library of Children's Literature, in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno; this branch contains some 400,000 items of children's literature from around the world. Though the NDL's original mandate was to be a research library for the National Diet, the general public is the largest consumer of the library's services. In the fiscal year ending March 2004, for example, the library reported more than 250,000 reference inquiries.
As Japan's national library, the NDL collects copies of all publications published in Japan. Moreover, because the NDL serves as a research library for Diet members, their staffs, the general public, it maintains an extensive collection of materials published in foreign languages on a wide range of topics; the NDL has eight major specialized collections: Modern Political and Constitutional History. The Modern Political and Constitutional History Collection comprises some 300,000 items related to Japan's political and legal modernization in the 19th century, including the original document archives of important Japanese statesmen from the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century like Itō Hirobumi, Iwakura Tomomi, Sanjō Sanetomi, Mutsu Munemitsu, Terauchi Masatake, other influential figures from the Meiji and Taishō periods; the NDL has an extensive microform collection of some 30 million pages of documents relating to the Occupation of Japan after World War II. This collection include the documents prepared by General Headquarters and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the Far Eastern Commission, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team.
The Laws and Preliminary Records Collection consists of some 170,000 Japanese and 200,000 foreign-language documents concerning proceedings of the National Diet and the legislatures of some 70 foreign countries, the official gazettes, judicial opinions, international treaties pertaining to some 150 foreign countries. The NDL maintains a collection of some 530,000 books and booklets and 2 million microform titles relating to the sciences; these materials include, among other things, foreign doctoral dissertations in the sciences, the proceedings and reports of academic societies, catalogues of technical standards, etc. The NDL has a collection of 440,000 maps of Japan and other countries, including the topographica
