Having an institutional repository has become mandatory for any higher educational institute. Asahikawa Medical College started to design and build an institutional repository system, known as AMCoR (Asahikawa Medical College Repository), in 2006 as part of Cyber Science Infrastructure (CSI), a national project sponsored by the National Institute of Informatics (NII). AMCoR has provided open access to institutional research output since February 28, 2007. This paper reports the development of AMCoR, with special reference to its project planning-including management and content acquisition.

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The Medical Library of Shinshu University started to subscribe to the Japanese medical full-text e-journal package “Medical*Online” in March 2006. Here, we report the trends in the use of “Medical*Online” and its effect on the library between May 2006 and April 2007. Based on access logs for this period, we analyzed WHEN this package was most frequently used (month, hour and day of week) and also WHAT KIND of articles were requested (journal title, category and articles). The effect of “Medical*Online” on our library services, particularly serials management and interlibrary loans, was also investigated. These analyses indicated that “Medical*Online” was an extremely useful e-journal package not only for its users, but also for the library.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Western Pacific is now creating a bibliographic database of locally published biomedical journals in collaboration with experts from its member states. The database, called the Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM), is a component of the WHO's Global Index Medicus platform. The Global Index Medicus, which will integrate databases developed by WHO's Regional Offices, is expected to complement internationally known tools, such as MEDLINE, by providing regional and indigenous health information. Raising the level of quality of journal publishing is also an important issue for the WPRIM project, because health experiences and practices of countries in the Western Pacific Region, which are relevant and useful for other countries, must be reported in reliable forms. To publicize the activities concerning WPRIM, the Japanese National Committee for WPRIM (WPRIMJ, http://wprimj.umin.jp) held a seminar entitled “Sharing Reliable Health Information: From Health Professional to Consumer” on 19 May 2007 in Tokyo. After an overview of the WPRIM project was presented, measures to enhance the quality of journals were discussed from the following points: 1) revising each journal's instructions for authors in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” and in journals containing articles on clinical trials 2) requiring official registration of clinical trials and 3) improving report forms for randomized controlled trials by using the CONSORT statement.

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