The author, who has taken part in the activities of the Japan Medical Library Association (JMLA) for many years and now retired, looks backs on the course of JMLA which has confronted with difficulties from its foundation to the post-World War II period. In particular, realized reduction of the price on German periodicals, publication of Union Catalogs are discussed.

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The Annual Statistics of Japan Medical Library Association is one of the useful materials to grasp the tendency of medical libraries in Japan.
In order to make a guidepost for the management of our library the author tried to analyse the 50th Annual Statistics (1979), laying stress on the funds for books and periodicals in medical libraries of the national universities.

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Air Cargo services being started by a group of book agencies around 1965, are handed down to publishers who make use of their ASP (Accelerated Surface Post) and SAL (Surface Post Air Lifted) service systems, and both enjoy thriving business today, mutually supplementing their own service features. The major economic efficiency attained from Air Cargo service though application of Total Cost, etc. makes not only the distribution of journals convenient, but also their transportation far accurate.

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This study is based on analysis of 6, 802 references drawn from 498 articles of the Japanese Journal of Physiology in period 1975-1979. Citations per paper are 23 in average. A rank order list of 130 serial titles is given. The list indicates a hight concentration of articles in relatively low number of serial titles. It is necessary to have 10 titles of a higher rank to cover 50.76% of total citations, 60 titles for 81.9 and 130 titles for 90.4%. The following results are obtained; (1) 91.5% of all references are to serials, 8.5% are to non-serials. (2) J. Physiol. (London) is the most important serial in Japanese researchers in the field of physiology. It covers 17.24% of all serial citations. (3) The median citation age of the top 20 serials is 8.2 years old and non-serials is 7.5 years old. The Japanese Journal of Physiology which the half life is 3.2 years old is the Shortest one. (4) Analysing of Countrywise distribution of serials, 40.56% citation are covered by U. S. A, serials, 28.14% by U. K. serials and 12.76% by Japanese serials.

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