The purpose of this study is to investigate about how the Bookstart is conducted at the respective municipalities, and how the staffs think about the effectiveness of it and the reading for babies. In study 1, fifty-eight municipalities who had conducted the Bookstart until August 2003 were selected randomly within the Kanto region. The results showed that the Bookstart was most commonly targeted at 3 to 4 month old babies and had the various possible effective ways of the Bookstart. In study 2, four municipalities which had implemented the Bookstart in year 2001/2002 were selected from the municipalities in study 1. In the interviews for the staffs, most of them expected the promotion of communication between parents and babies as well as the utilization of the libraries with the Bookstart as a start. In the observations during the Bookstart, they made efforts to create a friendly atmosphere, and worked hard to have enough manpower and to connect with other organizations at any given Bookstart session. These studies suggested that by providing the parents a thorough explanation of the Bookstart together with the promotion of the library's services, the preparation of the place, and the time frame for each session, as conducting it in the morning play an important role in creating interest in parents to read picture books to their baby and using the libraries.On the basis of this study, there will be more substantial s tudies in the future on the methods of implementing the Bookstart and its effectiveness.

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The purpose of this study to investigate how the Joint Committee of the National Education Association and the American Library Association established the principles of school library service that school library service, being an essential part of the total school program is basically a responsibility of the board of education in its report, Schools and Public Libraries : Working Together in School Library Service, published in 1941. We studied documents of Joint Committee of the National Education Association and the American Library Association from 1931 to 1941 and compared drafts of Schools and Public Libraries. In 1930's the arguments that school libraries were wasteful duplication of public libraries arisen from changing economic condition. The Joint Committee made a plan to study fundamental relationships between schools and public libraries, and to formulate a statement of principles underlying school library service. The Joint Committee opposed the arguments and put forward the view that school library service is essential part of the school program and school library service is a responsibility of boards of education.

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The aim of this study is to examine the kinds of materials that are not currently available through the Science Information System in Japan. We used a logistic model with books that were not in the collection as the dependent variable, and location of publication, type of publisher, year of publication, and field as independent variables to determine the nature of the books that were not in the collection. It was found that books from the following locations were most likely to be in the collection (in this order): Japan, North and South America, United Kingdom, Europe (not including United Kingdom), Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Books from the later regions were less likely to appear in the collection. The following publisher types were likely to be found in the collection (in the following order)with books by the later types of publishers being less likely to be available: publishing companies, private companies/conferences, governmental organizations, and universities. Books published before 1979 were less likely to be in the collection. Finally, books from the following fields were likely to be found in the collection (in this order)with books from the later fields being less likely to be available: humanities, pure sciences, engineering, social sciences, and life sciences. In particular, in the fields of engineering and life sciences, there is great demand for data collections, instruction manuals, and procedures manuals, so the likelihood of not finding them in the collection was increased.

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