This is a special lecture at the 30th anniversary of JICST. To develop science-and-te chnology-oriented society it is important to evaluate and select infinite information resources on science and technology, and to reorganize and apply them. This also relates to humanity. For the future, we have to establish scientific ethics that can exceed the expedience of science and technology. To be concrete, we have to create new industrial value that recovers and reclaims natural resources which men had wasted so far, and we have to establish a new technology to distribute maldistributed industrial benefits equally. And then, the selfcontrol of the human aiming at the harmony of nature and man will secure human liberty, and it will be done by the good function of man's brain.

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We now enter the era that Japanese enterprises have to make own decision on what they should do next as action leaders, since the time was over that they proceeded with their R & D just by following and learning lessons of success and failure produced by U.S. industries. Under this era information has been carrying more weight on corporate strategy and it has become important issue to utilize information how efficiently and effectively as data for judging critical decision matters. Focusing on this issue the author proposes three measures, i.e. enforcement of information gathering capacity, gathering of farsighted information, information processing based on the experiences through studying abroad and practices, and indicates five ways of information utilization such as construction of information network and application of a company history.

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A highly-developed information-oriented society based on “Information Network Technology” will be realized in the 21st century. In enterprises, fundamental research will be regarded as important more and more, and the effective use of information as resources will be indispensable. From the viewpoint of international distribution of information there is a criticism that Japan has been offering the information on science and technology insufficiently to the overseas countries, but, for example, in the steel industry lots of house-organ technical journals in English version has been offered overseas. And recently several information firms have started translating Japanese information into English and providing overseas. However, there are some problems to be taken into consideration; 1. The information is not integrated, 2. there is not any co-ordination among the firms, 3. others. Then the author proposes communal use of machine translation system and construction of database for overseas that integrate such firms” work preserving each individuality.

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Change in social circumstances caused by arrival of highly developed information-oriented society has altered what information services in medical libraries should be dramatically. Keeping with complication and diversification of needs by users such as medical doctors, researchers, medical technicians and so on medical librarians have been playing important role in the information activities, and are required to master more specialized knowledge. This paper outlines changes in circumstances surrounding medical libraries, discusses role of medical librarians in online information retrieval services, and introduces various curriculum for library education. The author proposes that humanity of librarian him or herself is still a key factor for library services regardless of advancement of computerization.

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A strong interest has been shown to a legal protection of computer program, a typical intellectual property in the information industry. In Japan, there is a strong belief that the scope of copyright protection of program should be restricted and a degree of its protection should be weakened as compared with the protection given to other ordinary works since a program is a specific type of copyrightable work. The purpose of this article is to review such a special copyrightable work theory and to develop a criticism to such a theory from both theoretical and practical aspects, as well as to validate an appropriateness of the copyright protection since we can use an abundant accumulation of precedents under the copyright laws to give a practical solution to specific problems arising in connection with the legal protection of programs. An interface issue and the protection of program's SSO shall be also reviewed from such a viewpoint.

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Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. has played a pioneering role in developing CTS (Computerized Typesetting System) for these twenty years, and has accumulated a great deal of technical know-how. The company intends to integrate accumulated information into multimedia. As for CD-ROM, it has been aggressively striven to develop, from planning to data-input and data-processing. Recently, under the guidance of Research group on molecular design, It has developed a CD-ROM system to support research and development in the field of organic chemistry. This system is constructed mainly of the data in “Organic Syntheses”, a bible among organic chemists. The outline of the structure of files, and that of indexes which is a key point in retrieval, the flow chart of the retrieval process, and editing processes, etc. are described in this paper.

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Japan High Polymer Center (JHPC) constructed experimentally a database system named CAPDAS, mainly consists of catalogue informations using CD-ROM, which is for investigation of user needs for database on high polymer materials. Purposes, characteristics, construction and kinds of data of this system are described. Procedure of the information retrieval is also described by showing actual images on the display. Besides character information, image information is added in to the CD-ROM on trial. User's response to CAPDAS and problems awaiting for solution to improve this system are also mentioned.

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Rapid progress in advanced informationalization has increased need to enforce documentation activities in industries. Responding to it Tokin Corporation has been engaged in database construction for patent information, technical reports and so on accumulated inside the Company. Two results are obtained; One is TOPICS, inhouse patent information management system, the other is TOMATIS, management and technical information system by use of personal computers and all-purposed relational database software. These systems aim at compiling databases of patent and technological management information generated internally and externally by low labor efforts as well as low cost, and providing for comprehensive information company-wide. This paper introduces the outline of these systems and how they are actually used.

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