Problems of university library materials
-laying stress on the policy-
1972 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 2-9-2-20
Details
1972 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 2-9-2-20
Among 378 universities and four-year colleges in various sizes in Japan in 1969, those institutions which possessed over 500,000 volumes were only twenty-three, and the largest one was the library system of the University of Tokyo with 3,400,000 volumes and the smallest was Chuo University with a few over 500,000 volumes, and two third of them were national university libraries. In terms of the size of the library holdings, the circumstances were much similar to the United States in the middle of 1930's.
For next ten years, how materials in the university libraries in Japan will be, what problems about them will arise, and how they should be assisting educations and researches in those Japanese universities.
In the chapter I, the following matters on university library materials are stated: a) Sizes and the rates of increase, b) How the library materials should be, c) Selections and evaluations of materials, d) A variety of materials and microform materials. Then, in the chapter II, the argument is concerned with the improvement and adjustment of the public services to be offered as one library system including various libraries in an university, and with its internal union catalog. Finally, the chapter III is related to the exertion for establishing regional and nation-wide inter-library cooperation systems.
In 1970's library materials in each university must grow in various sizes and new types of materials like microform must be also added greatly. However, as a whole, the amount of university library materials will be still not larger than that of university libraries having been suffered administrative problems from the tremendous amount of increasing materials in the United States. The most important matter about which writer thinks is the offering public services of one library satisfactorily to all of the university people through the improvement of the library system. And then, all the library should cooperate to establish inter-library cooperation systems in various kinds, regional and nation-wide. Here we have to make efforts to discover Japanese styles of inter-library cooperations.
