Since the revision of the Law for the Welfare of the Physically Handicapped, the Japanese government has been giving financial support to Information Centers for persons with Hearing Disabilities or ICHD. In September 1994, eight ICHDs provided a variety of services for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing. This paper reports on some of the services and problems at these ICHDs. The answers to questionnaires, that had been sent to the centers in September 1994, were collected by November of the same year. The questionnaires consisted of 36 questions from six areas: administration, staff, equipment, users, service programs, and linkage with other social facilities. As a result of examining the answers, it was found that the ICHDs shared the following two problems. First, although making and lending captioned video tapes was the most common service program and occupied the majority of the staff, other services such as rehabilitative consultation, library, sign language interpretation and facsimile-telephone relay service were not yet developed to a sufficient degree. Second, most of the ICHDs had a solid linkage with the local government, the deaf community, and social welfare councils, whereas their relationship with public libraries, employment security offices, and public health centers was not particularly close.

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ADONIS (Article Delivery Over Network Information System) is an electronic document delivery service on CD-ROM. This system enables users to view articles from more than 620 journals through the computer's display and to print on-site. In March 1994, ADONIS was installed in Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokuso Hospital Library. In this paper, the author analyzes ADONIS journals based on “Journal Titles in ADONIS” from the following aspects: (1) Publishing countries. (2) Time lag between arrival of the new issue CD-ROM edition (ADONIS) and the paper edition. (3) Impact Factor of SCI Journal Citation Reports. (4) How many ADONIS journals are included in NLM or FM databases? (5) How many ADONIS journals are included in “List of Current Periodicals Acquired by Japanese Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Libraries”? (6) Publishers copyright charge (print out charge). The author also discusses problems in the future of ADONIS.

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