This article discusses common pitfalls encountered when Japanese users try to search for health communication studies. After briefly illustrating the development of the communication discipline in Japan, it argues that these historical factors often hinder effective literature searches on the subject of health communication in the Japanese language.
The article then gives several practical tips for accurate literature search by discussing the difference between “communication” and “communications” and by providing a list of valid and invalid search terms. It also presents a list of journal titles where health communication studies are extensively published.
Finally, the article concludes that the lack of a comprehensive database for the health communication literature in the Japanese language is a major obstacle to progress in the field in Japan and calls for bibliographic solutions to the current situation.

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The handling of referenced articles is one of the most typical tasks of researchers. Nonetheless, the work is important to the progress of research even though it involves monotonous, laborious, boring, and routine tasks. Recently, most publishers provide portable document format (PDF, Adobe Systems) versions of articles and researchers have to manage a large number of these files. In this paper, we introduce an application named iPapers to manage PDF files based on the reference metadata. The software provides a user interface with the ability to access articles using the name of the author, journal, MeSH keyword, and/or year of publication. These indices are automatically created using metadata. The software complements the metadata through open public databases, e. g. PubMed. Users can import the downloaded PDF files to the application with a ‘drag and drop’ operation. Users can also search for articles using PubMed, download a PDF file from a publisher's site, and import the downloaded file into the application. This application will help researchers to manage many article reprints in PDF format.

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In 2002 the World Health Organization set up the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) which gave the right to free or low-cost access to electronic journals for developing countries, and HINARI now offers 3, 777 titles to 113 targeted countries. Before the HINARI was introduced, from the point of limiting access to information, the impact of the cost to researchers in developing countries was very high. This report examines the present actual state of the HINARI and its impact in developing countries, analyzes the announcement literature with the bibliography indexed using the metrical method, and attempts to verify the influence and effect of the HINARI.

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The medical Information Center and Library of Aichi Medical University put in place a system whereby local inhabitants were able to make practical use of the library resources on their own, and in addition, started collaboration with the neighboring public libraries. This report surveys the library image which the government and the library industry demand, the idea of the regional alliances that we are challenging, the results and the future prospects.
Five libraries are working in close cooperation, for instance, making library pathfinders or putting together check lists for book selection. Our purpose is to collect high quality medical information materials and then make them available, thus supporting the promotion of the health of regional library users.
There are innumerable problems to solve. It is important to struggle for the capacity in our daily routine to put our plan on track, keep it going, and maintain its growth. To this end, an exchange of knowledge and skills between public libraries and our medical library is essential.

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A special setting is applied to a personal computer, and it breaks down, which may be the fault of the operative technique, rather than a mechanical fault. When the computer has to be repaired, it is essential that all saved data must be preserved intact, but in the case of several different personal computer environments, repair becomes problematic. I want to solve such a problem. In the case where the environment of all personal computers is the same, it is easy to identify the machine that has changed it. However, if the data have not been preserved by the personal computer which has broken down, there is no outflow at all. A new system was chosen to prevent this problem.
It was decided that a thin client system of two kinds should be used. In one case, the Citrix Presentation system is employed as a central server, with the library staff the only ones who have access to screen input for the server. In the other case, the Ardence Virtualization and Software Streaming Platform is used, and the users have boot access to this arm of the system, none of the terminals of which has a hard drive but are all linked to the server. As a result, the number of breakdowns has decreased, and repair has become simpler. Information loss has not occurred, and breakdown-related data loss has been prevented. Because data are saved in the server when it is being used, it is possible to access these data from any of the terminals. Users have expressed complete satisfaction with this thin client approach, but on the other hand, complaints have been received from the staff, because working with the central server is apparently more difficult than with an ordinary personal computer.

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Health and medical information services attract a great deal of attention in public libraries as a problem solution-type service next to business support services. This is a detailed report about the Health Information Corner (HIC) in Yokohama City Central Library, which opened on December 19, 2006 at which time there were few precedent examples in other public libraries nation-wide. It shows one possibility regarding a health and medical information service aimed at the general public. The report gives concrete examples regarding references and the terms used in the HIC and mentions cooperative efforts with other systems.

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Objective: On the hypothesis that the health information offered on the homepages of Medical Associations is best for the general public, we collected and examined these information.
Methods: We investigated 99 homepages of member societies of the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences. We checked the information for the general public, and evaluated these data. Using the survey matrix, we reviewed these homepages.
Results: Thirty-one medical societies (31%) have pages especially for the public, and other 37 societies (37%) have health information for general audiences. The type of information most offered on the homepages is “explanation of diseases or procedures”.
“Readability” and “disclosure of ownership” were evaluated as high on the content criteria, whereas “disclaimers”, “clinical consultation” and “compliance” were evaluated as low.
Conclusions: The provision of health information by these medical societies is still inadequate, however we may be able to provide a list of their websites or offer publications for the general public.

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