The digital transformation (DX) is being promoted as a policy to create innovative business models through digitization of operations and products, especially the industrial sector in Japan. In recent years, DX has been emphasized in the fields of education, research, and libraries as an innovation through the promotion of digitalization of library operations and services. This paper reviews the importance of collaboration among university libraries and with national institutions such as the National Institute of Informatics(NII) and the National Diet Library(NDL) by reconsidering DX from a long-term perspective and discussed about a future direction for DX.

　With the recent opening of Shanghai Library east building, an opportunity is presented to the main building to reinforce its positioning as a research library. In order to fulfill this target, the operation team of the main building is redefining its services through three product lines: closed-stack service, knowledge discovery service, and information research, while digital transformation (DX) has always been a pivotal driving force behind the redefinition. This article presents three distinct cases that first illustrate the challenges and obstacles faced by the library in providing various types of services, and then shed light on to the complicated effects of new approaches applied. These cases provide valuable insights into how Shanghai Library has been responding to the information environment changes and what strategies are proving most effective.

　Since the establishment of the Digital Agency in September 2021, there have been significant developments in the digital transformation (DX) of information and resources in Japan. The revision of copyright laws, the transition of national archives documents to digital management, the incorporation of digital archives into museum operations, and the enabling of text search capabilities within the National Diet Library's digital collection are among the notable changes. In this context, the National Institute of Japanese Literature is actively advancing the “Project for Creating Problem-Solving Humanities by a Data-Driven Approach”. This initiative aims to facilitate the sharing of humanities research with other academic fields and to foster problem-solving approaches within humanities studies. Various libraries across the country are positioned not only as contributors of materials to such humanities projects but also as platforms for utilizing accumulated digital information and research outcomes. This paper highlights the potential for Japanese humanities to establish new relationships with society through these means.

　Driven by new generation information technologies such as Big Data, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, 5G, and Blockchain, with the progress of China's digital transformation, libraries in China have been transforming towards the goal of “Smart Libraries” in the past decade or so.

　The purpose of the “Smart Library” is “Smart Service” to the public. This report takes the Shanghai Library East as an example to introduce the current situation of “Smart Services” in libraries. And elaborates on the convenience that users have gained from the changes in user services.

　Under the DX background，activities held in public libraries have been changing. To promote reading, various creative approaches appear among which may become the normal routine of libraries. This analysis will conclude the common strategies and obstacles among these cases.

　Under the DX background, activities held in public libraries have been changing. To promote reading, various creative approaches appear among which may become the normal routine of libraries. This analysis will conclude the common strategies and obstacles among these cases.

　In order to clarify the relationship between accessibility, fun, and information load in "play" for the visually impaired, this study conducted a practice using "Career Poker" with Braille cards and a fighting game in a video game. The results showed that playing cards with braille, which provide accessibility, has the same information load as those with clear vision, and that the visually impaired find it interesting and can enjoy it as a "play" on an equal footing with those with clear vision. On the other hand, even fighting games without accessibility, if the operability problem caused by lack of accessibility is reduced, the same information load as that of the sighted can be realized, and the game can be enjoyed by the visually impaired as a "play" that they can also enjoy. Based on the above results, we can conclude that accessibility is not an absolute condition for "play," although it does affect the success of "play".

　How should we cite archival materials, which can be in various media and formats, different from regular literature such as books and articles? In recent work, an analysis of descriptive and metadata standards for archives suggested that they were influenced by the British standard BS6371:1983, and a case study of citation in a Japanese journal published for over 90 years was shown. Basically, articles published in academic journals are supposed to follow academic style guides besides submission rules. However, no comprehensive research has been conducted in Japan regarding citation systems of archival materials in style guides. In this work, we focus on the citation systems of archival materials in the two style guides, and try to show their changes and origins of them, and to clarify their characteristics.

　A survey targeting Japanese university students and their associates, asking them to write short narratives about three "memories" related to libraries was conducted. 198 "memories" from 67 contributors were collected and analyzed the types of libraries, the ages of contributors and the content of the "memories," and their interrelationships. The results indicated the presence of recurring patterns related to the types of libraries, ages, and content in the "memories," such as "spatial impressions of public libraries from childhood," or "personal interactions with librarians at school libraries."

　The purpose of this study is to identify the potential of the syllabi as a source of information to improve learning support by university libraries in Japan. A syllabus survey was conducted for 130 universities in 2022. This paper reports the results of 111 universities, excluding 19 universities that are still in the process of work as of now (Oct. 2023). We used the syllabus system of each targeted university to find syllabi with the descriptions of “library,” and obtained 16,462 syllabi in total. Approximately 20 to 30% of the descriptions were on topics such as library use, library resources, and education on library use, and less than 10% of the descriptions referred to course support tools such as pathfinders. However, some of the items show trends by type and size of university, academic year, and academic fields, and they can be a useful source of information for understanding the needs of users. Therefore, it can be pointed out that the university libraries should make proposals for improvement of the syllabi and its system from the viewpoint of learning support services.

　This study investigated the efficacy of generative AI in recommending novels for purposes such as reading guidance. Initially, the research varied the combinations of items specified in the prompts without setting a fixed group of novels, to see which elements when included, would be effective and to what extent recommendations for non-existent books (termed "Hallucinations") would occur. The findings indicated that changing the elements in the prompts did not significantly alter the recommendations, with about 20% of the suggested titles being non-existent. Additionally, when recommendations were solicited using three distinct inputs—'title,' 'synopsis,' and 'book review'—for a set of 50 novels, the 'title' input yielded results closest to those chosen by humans, whereas 'book review' was the furthest. However, these results may be influenced by the fact that the targeted books were famous and predominantly bestsellers, which might have allowed ChatGPT to make accurate judgments without being taught the content, suggesting the need for further research.