This is a lecture at the 15th anniversary of JICST Chugoku Branch Office. A recent progress of VLSI technologies will make possible to simulate some functions of human beings, the results of which will prepare next new innovation for a coming now century.

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The model of operationalist and conceptualist searching styles describes searching behavior of experienced online searchers. It is based on the systematic observation of five experienced online searchers, and on the analysis of 10 to 13 searches conducted by each of them. Operationalist searchers use the system features in order to modify a retrieved set without changing the conceptual meaning it presents, conceptualist searchers modify a retrieved set by changing the meaning of the concept. Although not comprehensive, the model aids in recognizing special and individual characteristics of searching behavior.

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A survey of more than 200 physics journals shows that their cost-effectiveness, as measured by the ratio of the cost per printed character to the frequency with which articles are cited, varies by three orders of magnitude. This shows that there are many substantially expensive journals of physics. At the present time, physics libraries face the financial crisis caused by the rapid increase in the prices of physics journals. We analyze its causes and discuss solutions to the crisis.

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This article describes the indexing aid system and project at JICST, API, NLM and BIOSIS. They are dealing with the very broad domain of science, medicine and technological literatures and indexing is done by use of controlled terms, the indexing is routinely performed by highly skilled indexers. Because of the high cost of controlled indexing of bibliographic information they have designed automated indexing system and/or expert-like system to take advantage of many years of experienced indexing using knowledge bases and /on thesauri.

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This article discusses the U.S. and European national strategies and policies for information society. Coping with the declining competitiveness in high-tech products and Japanese technological advantages both have been trying hard to strengthen technology base and to deregulate the telecommunications services markets. The U.S. approach in 1980's, unlike its liberalist principle, has been characterized by technological protectlonism and defense-oriented policies. European Communities' approach has been more comprehensive and systematic, investing heavily telecommunication infrastructure, deregulating domestic market, and promoting cooperation of member countries. However, both of these approaches have, so far, been unable to achieve a considerable success.

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