The Digital Archive of Japan’s 2011 Disasters project is an initiative of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University in collaboration with several partners. We aim to collect, preserve, and make accessible as much of the digital record of the disasters as possible, to enable scholarly research and analysis of the events and their effect.

The Digital Archive of Japan’s 2011 Disasters’ core missions
1 to index, preserve and make widely accessible the digital records of the events of March 2011 and their aftermath
2 to provide a public space of information sharing, collaboration and conversation for citizens, researchers and policy makers
3 to serve as a site of shared memory for those most affected by these events and most concerned about their consequences

The archive aims to foster new connections, both between items and among users. As users move from item to item and collection to collection they encounter an ever-expanding network of fellow archivists, from the major organization that submits thousands of location- and direction-tagged photographs to the fellow citizen who submits her family’s contribute to the historian who seeks to understand the interaction of public and private actors in the relief effort.