Facilities

The Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Academic Center, completed in April 2002, was built as the new academic center for research and instruction within Otani University. Its name, Ko-rukan, comes from a passage in the Su-tra of Immeasurable Life, where the Buddha's enlightenment is said to echo (ko-) and spread (ru) throughout the ten directions. The main library, Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute, Joint Research Room, media hall, university museum, gallery and computer center are all located within the Ko - rukan. With "information" as its keyword, all the facilities are integrated organically to enhance the quality of instruction and research. Additionally, the Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Academic Center is designed to serve the needs of an increasingly information-oriented society. As the focal point for opening up the university to the public, it serves to disseminate the research conducted within the university, as well as its intellectual and cultural heritage, to society at large. 

The Joint Research Room is a space where both graduate and undergraduate students can use to prepare for their classes. Students from all departments can use this room. In order to foster a broad interdisciplinary perspective, there are no partitions in this room.
The room, which contains 450 seats, is stocked with 20,000 volumes of basic reference works. There are also 40 personal computers that can be used freely as well as 180 terminals where students can plug in their own computers. The room is also equipped with about 70 personal computers which can be checked out to be used in the room.
Seven seminar rooms are located adjacent to the Joint Research Room. They are used for classes, student-led study groups and other activities. All the rooms are equipped with internet access and projectors.
Assistant professors attached to the Joint Research Room are available to help students and answer their questions.
The Joint Research Room is connected with stairs to the reading room on the second floor of the library. It is also possible to check out library books at the counter of the Joint Research Room. In these ways, the Joint Research Room is designed to help undergraduate and graduate students who desire to conduct more specialized research. 

The Otani University Library, containing over 780,000 books and about 6,000 journals and newspapers, is in both quantity and quality one of the foremost libraries for the study of the humanities in Japan.
A major characteristic of the library lies in its extensive holdings in Buddhist books and materials. Reflecting its origins as a seminary for the Higashi Honganji, it has a renown collection of ancient manuscripts and Buddhist texts from major areas of Buddhist influence, especially central and east Asia. It also has one of the world's largest collections of Tibetan, Pa - li and Sanskrit texts.
Also noteworthy is its large number of Japanese texts and documents. Numerous works listed in the Comprehensive Catalogue of Japanese Works (published by Iwanami Shoten) are found only in this library. The rich collection of materials on east Asia also make the library one of the leading centers for Sinological research.
The library makes its collection widely accessible to the public. Its holdings can be used, not only to students and teaching staff of Otani University, but also by researchers from other institutions.
 

Otani University owns eight Important Cultural Objects as well as about 12,000 other valuable resource materials covering various fields of the humanities such as Buddhism, history, literature and the arts. The university museum was established in October 2003 to preserve these valuable cultural resources and to exhibit them to the university community and the general public.
In addition to mounting exhibits, the museum staff, consisting of curators, researchers, research assistants and others, collect, classify, research and publish studies on these materials. It also creates digital databases of its holdings and is planning to open a digital museum to make its collection available world-wide through the internet.