The article discusses user satisfaction as the goal of information services and the major roles of information professionals in achieving the goal. It overviews the major impacts of the Internet on information services, and introduces gateways and digital reference services (DRSs) as Internet navigation tools. Three forms of IT oriented information services including (1) electronic libraries, (2) information salons, and (3) information resources rental services are presented. Skills and knowledge expected of information professionals in these services are also discussed. Indispensable virtues common to all information service proessinals including proactive attitudes toward innovations, self-developments through continuous learning, and self-management skills are also mentioned.

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Librarians are regarded as semi-profession even in the U.S.A. Comparing the degree of profession of academic libraians in Japan with that in the U.S.A., the former is lower than the latter from the points of education and qualification of librarians and autonomy. In Japan it is difficult to raise the degree of profession because of some characteristics of Japan. They are the difficulty of to determine professional librarians and their work, the existence of the lifetime employment system, and the lack of idea of service to the society. From the author's experience the author introduce some backgrounds of profession in the U.S.A.

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The former library systems have been designed and developed by each university and organization. Systems Librarian have maintained and managed the system while struggling for it one by one. But the evaluation for library system was not so much high as their effort. Therefore, they have a strong sense of being sufferer and their motivation is guradually going down. As a result, that has influence on the quality of library services. So now, we (librarian) must reengineering our business model and unify bibliographical data format (US-MARC), protocol (ISOILL, Z39.50) and system packages. And we need develop human-resourcesharing or venture business model. I would like to groupe for the human skill which is required to realize it.

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Knowledge and skills of library and information science and related areas, are naturally needed to public librarians. And having a good sense or attitudes toward library customers, are more important. The most needed thing is the collaboration of sense, knowledge, skills and attitudes.

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What is the 'information service' at the libraries of private companies? In private companies, the services are offered in specialized ways depending on their business types and company scales, though public libraries deal with general information. Also, private companies need information as quickly as possible without any oversight. The environment of information technology is evolving rapidly, and our role as research support section is changing from just giving information by on-line search to introducing useful web search systems for researchers. However, although the internet is popular worldwide, there is information which can't be obtained from desktop computer. I think it's important to obtain the exact information which researchers need as quickly as possible with limited budget and manpower by using inter-and intra-company human network.

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What is the thing which is necessary for the library to function as the strategy subdivision in the organization?It is described from the viewpoint that the library management is business.

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In the last few years, people have been citing electronic sources that they find on the Web or electronic journals in academic documents. Unlike citing printed works, citing the Internet sources has especially some problems in information cycle-there is nobody who checks the reliability of information, the information found on the Web is easily modified in any time and users may not always access the same sources, and bibliographic format is not uniformed yet and so on. This article deals with the problems and solutions about citing electronic sources, examining the research of citing these sources that the author made.

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[in Japanese]

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