The angst Lindsay Nelson was seeing on her Twitter feed was palpable. As the Meiji University assistant professor read post after post by fellow scholars unable to come to Japan to conduct academic research due to pandemic-related border restrictions, she felt she had to do something.
“I’ve been in situations where I was stranded outside Japan,” Nelson tells The Japan Times. “Situations where I thought, ‘It would be so great if I had someone who could get me this one magazine article or this one random pamphlet that just isn’t available digitally.’”
This led Nelson to put out a tweet offering a free “grab and deliver” service for scholars who needed a particular item for their research that could only be accessed in Japan. She offered to take requests, find the necessary material and get it to the scholar who needed it. It was her own small way to help out those who won’t be able to conduct research in Japan for the foreseeable future.