Abstract
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) co-organized an Advisory Panel on Promotion of the Use of Publications in a Digital Networked Society in March 2010. The author participated in the advisory panel and two working teams - technology and usage working teams - under the panel. In this article, the author describes some issues and future perspectives which came up with him from the discussions at working teams. This article is not written as a scientific paper to analyze the characteristics of digital books and publishing but is primarily written as an article based on the author's experiences in digital library, digital archive and metadata research. This article first mentions the background and the stand points of the author and then discusses the issues and perspectives on digital publishing and digital books.
