The tuition in Waseda university is actually quite high, in exchange, you can actually enjoy an awesome database – Waseda WINE. You can complete stunning theses and essays by quoting the books, e-journals and data from Waseda WINE. Sadly, as an exchange student, I am afraid that no one will teach you how to use it. Therefore, this article is going to introduce it!
Newspaper Databases
Click “Electronic Resources”.
Search for “Find Newspaper Articles”, Under it, a lot of newspaper databases should be found. This articles will take Asahi Shimbun‘s database as example.
You might need to activate the Waseda VPN with your student ID before using the database.
After activating the VPN, press ‘login’ until you successfully enter Asahi Shimbun‘s database.
To cite an example, I have inserted “Yasukuni Shrine” as a keyword and pressed the ‘search’ button. 9987 related news articles have popped up, which is far too many to be analyzed.
Therefore, it is essential to search the keywords only within a certain period of time (e.g. 2000-2010) and when the keyword is displayed in the title of the news article (見出し). Only 60 articles have popped up now.
You can also compare the data found in Asahi Shimbun‘s database with the data from other newspapers’ databases. Some conclusion might be able to be drawn through this progress.
E-journals
Sometimes, the professors might ask you to read reference materials without distributing them in class. For instance, I was asked to read The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland : Peace Lectures from the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University in order to deepen my understanding in Good Friday Agreement. Actually, it can be found through Waseda WINE easily too.
Feel free to read those E-journals online!
Books
It is convenient to search for books through Waseda WINE too. I am interested in the Japanese perspectives on Xinhai Revolution in China. Through inserting Japan and Xinhai Revolution, related books can be found. It also shows where the books can be borrowed from.
Make sure you use it when you are exchanging in Waseda!