Since 1972, Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare has been promoting researches on so-called Intractable Diseases, which are chronic, often complicate other diseases and have severe effects and accompanying physical and social handicaps. Beginning with 8 Committees in 1972, they grew to 43 in 1976, and from that time have remained steady in number. The 43 Committees fall into 2 groups; those researching a single disease, for example Behçet's Disease, and groups researching several diseases with a common aspect, for example Autoimmune Diseases. In 1983, 1466 researchers and physicians from 260 organizations, including all medical schools in Japan, were contributing to this project. Diseases under research numbered more than 150. However, although the Annual Reports of the Research Committees are recognized as important primary information resources in medical libraries, sometimes they can't be used effectively, because they are published as government reports, and thus lack the unified form that publishing materials usually have. Also the Committees are re-evaluated every three years and some Committees are changed or discontinued at that time. Furthermore Reports are not indexed in secondary information sources like Igaku Chuo Zasshi. To use there Reports more effectively as a library materials, we have made 2 tools. One is “Table of transitions of Research Committees, 1972-1980”. The second is “Index of diseases referred to Research Committees”.

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It is important in online bibliographic information retrieval that key words that accurately describe the content of the article are assigned. A survey of assignment of key words in foreign journals, Japanese journals published in European languages and Japanese journals held by the Medical Library of Nagasaki University was conducted. About 30% of the journals assign key words to each article, among which only 15% adopted MeSH as key words. It was also found from the survey on the starting year of assigning key words to articles in the journal that the role of key words has been transfered from assisting researchers to facilitating indexing at the time of preparation of online data bases. The author believes that all journals should adopt a system to assign key words (especially MeSH) so that indexers may index the articles easily.

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The Igaku Chuo Zasshi (the Japana Centra Revuo Medicina) was started by the late Dr. Amako in 1903. It has, over a period of last 80 years, produced about 4, 000, 000 abstracts reflecting changes and progress of medical science, dental science, pharmaceutical science and other related fields in Japan.
Along with the development of science and economy in Japan, educational institutions, research facilities, health care facilities spread rapidly. Along with this development, the fields of research were also diversified resulting in corresponding increase in the volume of literature published. In fiscal 1984, the number of periodicals increased to about 1800 and the number of abstracts increased to about 190, 000. This year also saw the publication of the Volume Number 3, 342.
As the number of periodicals increased, strong need was felt for reducing the time lag, simplification of retrieval procedures and smooth operation of the entire operation. In response to these needs a comprehensive study was initiated and continued over the past several years. As a result, computerization and machine editing have been carried out since April 1983. This enabled to add abstracts simultaneously with the index and also made annual cumulated index a reality for the first time.
The Medical Abstracts Society started to cooperate with the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology (JICST) in the creation of “the JICST File on Medical Science in Japan” from 1981 and for creation of an English language data base from 1985.
The Society was authorized to receive the research grants of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture from 1981.
The Society plans to continue to improve abstracting services and at the same time strive to develop new information services, draw up measures to keep up with developments in research with the view of responding to the needs of researcher and literature searchers.

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The Japan Medical Library Association was established in 1927, and its major role is interlibrary loan activities. Arranging the “Union Catalog” of journals and books (holdings list), which is based on the interlibrary loan activities, is one of the basic tasks of the Association. As for the “Union Catalog” of foreign medical books, a total of eight volumes of the “Union Catalogue of Foreign Books in the Libraries of Japanese Medical Schools” was published from 1949 to 1956. This so-called “Union Catalog” has been edited by using a computer from 1977 up to the present. This study reports the history of the “Union Catalog.”

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