The slides in this photo archive were created from photographs collected through field surveys and research cooperation in various countries around the world by researchers of JIRCAS and the Tropical Agriculture Research Center (now called the Tropical Agriculture Research Front) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. These were stored in a slide image information database (TROSIS) [1] in the then Survey Information Division. The slides were later converted to image files and assigned metadata and relevant information to allow everyone to have access to Japan’s international contribution and record of research activities covering 85 countries between the 1970s and 1990s.

To date, JIRCAS has been accumulating and saving a lot of pictures from field surveys and business trips. Slides in past databases were not searchable, thus the challenge was on how these materials can be properly utilized.

In addition to digitizing the slide images to image files, we also retrieved information stored in TROSIS, such as titles, photographers, and country names, as metadata in the digital images. This makes the data easier to manage and search with image-sharing services like Flickr and other commercial applications.

[1] Suzuki Daisuke and Mitsuo Suzuki. “Tropical Agriculture and Forestry Research: Technical Information and Database User Manual.” Tropical Research Data No. 95, September 1993.