Against the background of a super-aging society, information on the older people is being provided in public libraries. In this study, the questions of what the meaning and significance of is obtaining information on the older people in public libraries, and what kind of information on the older people is used in public libraries, were investigated, given the many channels available for obtaining information on the older people. A questionnaire (online) survey and a borrowing survey were conducted. The results showed that information related to the older people in public libraries is information related to changes in health and outlook on life with age, and that it is often used by the older people themselves, their family members and others in their 50s and beyond, as they are becoming older.

Against the backdrop of the Japanese super-aged society, this study aims to shed light on the provision of health information for older people by municipalities in relation to aging and municipal finances. We examined and analyzed the financial capability indicator and the population aging rate of 316 municipalities in the Kanto region of Japan. Results demonstrated that the information was disaggregated by category—dementia, caregiving, and welfare services, with dementia being the most prevalent. Moreover, we discovered that the greater the financial stability of a municipality and the population aging rate, the greater the availability of the information. However, we also observed that although there were municipalities with a solid financial footing, some provided the information only on a list of welfare services, while others dealt with multiple subjects and actively provided the information, indicating a variety in how the information was provided.

Although reference services in libraries are provided by librarians who have expertise in information seeking, there are still some cases that cannot be solved (unresolved cases). However, there are still some cases that cannot be solved (unresolved cases). The reason for this is not only the difficulty of the questions, but also the difficulty in various aspects such as the construction of the library collection and the question and answer process. In order to clarify the actual situation of such unresolved cases, we analyzed 6,984 unresolved cases out of 124,588 reference cases disclosed to the public in the Cooperative Reference Database operated by the National Diet Library. As a result, it was found that unresolved cases are more frequent in questions that require detailed search to find accurate information sources and questions that include multiple subjects.