In terms of how university libraries and librarian should take part in information literacy education, the author examines the characteristics of the approaches to information literacy education. The author divides the approaches in information literacy education into the skill-oriented approach and the user-oriented approach, and extracted the characteristics from three perspective: those (1) viewpoint, (2) assumption and (3) learning outcome. The author points out that combing both approaches offer an effective perspective to the cooperation of the librarian and the faculty in planning for information literacy education in the future.

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Recently the performance of information retrieval systems and the internet access cost have been drastically improved. It is unnecessary to learn specific commands and operations of particular systems. End-users can independently search information without technical knowledge of retrieval methods. On the other hand, they are expected to evaluate and select information and to catch up with the changing information technologies by their own responsibility. The author has been teaching information retrieval practicum and information literacy for undergraduate students at the several universities for 10 years. So-called internet age students are not always good at searching academic information, and the digital divide exists even among them. This article introduces their information retrieval behavior and her several efforts in the class.

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Discussions are taking place on how learning support in university libraries can help to create, in a library, a learning environment that also offers support for the writing of papers and reports. Learning Commons in American university libraries and learning support in Japanese libraries are to support the development of information literacy acquisition for university. In this paper, I will introduce models for learning support and the learning environment in Japanese and American university libraries. Lastly, I will discuss the future role of university libraries, particularly with relation to learning support in the case of my work at a university library.

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The author spent one year at the Harvard-Yenching Library on an internship beginning in March 2007. He observed a number of orientations and instruction classes at Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and other university libraries in the U.S. This article describes some cases of information literacy education activities and points out the differences and similarities between Japan and the U.S. Both American and Japanese university libraries encounter similar difficulties in their activities. Meanwhile, they utilize web technology and digital media, and build communication with users through their activities.

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This is report of scholarly database training for end users by using internet conferencing system. The course of Web of Science was held 50 times on the Internet, and 1300 people in total participated which were organized Thomson Reuters Japanese office in 2008. 36% of the participant was a researcher, 33% was a librarian, and 22% was a student. Moreover, about 50% of the participant was satisfied very much or was answered as satisfactory. The Internet training is a long-awaited method of literacy education for supporting rapidly increasing end user.

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National Institute of Informatics (NII) carries out Education and Training programs aiming at the development of human resources in universities and other institutions in order to support academic information infrastructure in Japan. NII has been providing Academic Information Literacy Training Course for librarians as part of the programs. This training course launched in 2003 by NII in response to requests from university libraries and has been implemented for 5 years since its formal inception in 2004 after the one-year experimental period. This report introduces the overview of the past 5 years of the course, which has been provided corresponding to the status of academic information literacy education in universities. Also I discuss the results, issues and future perspectives.

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Ube Industries started using computers in compiling and disseminating technical literatures in late 1950s. It then introduced CA Condesates magnetic tapes to disseminate chemical information in 1970s. After introducing online information systems such as JOIS and DIALOG, it began using CAS ONLINE in 1980. Experiences at the CAS User Council were described, too.

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Research planning has become difficult more than ever, due to change in research environment. No matter of the country or size of institution, senior decision makers such as presidents and vice presidents with responsibility in research planning are facing difficulties making strategic decisions. "Which research area should I focus on?" "Which area should I allocate my resources?" are one of many issues they face in daily roles. At Elsevier, we succeeded in developing a new tool "SciVal Spotlight" to assist senior decision makers to make decisions efficiently and effectively. What are the key features of Spotlight? What is the difference between Scopus? These points will be covered in this paper, by introducing examples.

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