This study, targeting private library, has made clear the role of the social capital which help establish the activities of the private library.
 Private library aims to increase the communication and gradually contributes to regional vitalization by turning vacant stores and space into libraries. Spreads of the activity is seen originally from the city of Funabashi, based on the support of the local residents and volunteers.
 This study focuses on the current conditions of the private library and the details of motivations since its early establishment stage, followed by the examinations of possible social capital that leads to the expansion of the private library. This research covers the outlines of 29 private libraries, including the year in which the library was opened, the function and the address. It also looks into the motivation and the process of how the private library was opened as well as the media who have had acknowledge of private library. The research is then followed by an analysis on the characteristics of each library and the relationship between each other chronologically.
 As a result,
 (1)private library has expanded gradually with the support of those who have sympathy to the activity.
 (2)Moreover, in terms of the motivations, some private library is opened because of the physical circumstances such as increasing demands for a place to stalk endless books as well as for the solutions to hazards coming along with the vacant stores. While in other private library such as some complex that accommodates both library and store inside, the motivation is seen to have responded to the community revitalization, the latency time for little kids while their parents are having a long conversation and the increasing number of the visiting guests. It can thus be assumed that those motivations are closely related to the function of the annex facilities.
 (3)On the other hand, in terms of the media which have acknowledge of the private libraries, the contents of it has been shifted from newspapers and lectures to introductions and hearsays via neighboring acquaintance and other real time experience. Thus Through the expansion of the sympathy and the spontaneous involvement, private library has become a center that forms the social capital as well as that contributes to the community revitalization

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 Much attention has been drawn to private libraries operated by NPOs as an activity to revitalize local communities. With the cooperation of residents and volunteers, these libraries are built in vacant stores or spaces with the aim of promoting community revitalization by encouraging people to interact.

 This study reveals the relationship between management issues and space resources, by analyzing the motivation for opening private libraries based on statistics in the early days of establishment.

 

 As a result, the followings become clear:

 1) This study analyzed the motivation for opening private libraries and found a trend that consists of four components (axes). By interpreting each of the axes, the research found the first axis: “Desire for places/things”, the second axis: “Utilization of books themselves/ripple effect of books”, the third axis: “Personal (management’s) perspective/regional perspective”, and the fourth axis: “Appeal by books/improvement of operation”.

 2) The motivation for establishing private libraries found in 1) is influenced a lot by the usage of existing places adjoining the library, and the combination of the places’ issues and the Desire for books or the library forms the motivation.

 3) There is a relationship between the usage of places adjoining the library and “how to procure the space”, and operators utilize resources such as spaces owned by the adjoining place to prepare the place to open. In addition, by analyzing the causal relationship between the motivation for establishment and “how to procure the space”, it is found that directly operated libraries have initial motivations to revitalize the community or deal with a vacant store, procuring “vacant spaces” mostly. It also becomes clear that in the case of nursing homes or stores, libraries are established based on the current situation and issues of the usage of adjoining places that are already operating, and that there are many cases of “not yet procured” using existing spaces. For condominiums, there are motivations for product planning first, then they procure the space in conjunction with the construction of a new condominium (“new construction”).

 From the results above, it is clear that the motivation for establishing private libraries is formed by issues or desires that the usage of adjoining places have, and by space resources that each operating entity owns.

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As shopping streets have a variety of characteristics, it would be difficult to uniformly incorporate the concept of “barrier-free” access and universal design. In order to make shopping streets (which are city center environments) into spaces that facilitate their use by anyone, it is extremely important to determine the unique characteristics of each streets from the user's perspective, and to be aware of the trends in barriers as perceived by users. This study examined four shopping streets to determine the barriers that were perceived by users, from the perspective of both building environments and city center environments to gain a basic understanding of problems and issues at shopping streets.

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 The principle of normalization enables as many users as possible to use existing shopping streets with diverse characteristics. Creating shopping street environments based on this principle is expected to become even more important in the future. This study is part of a series of studies aimed at identifying barriers at shopping streets. The previous study in the series examined four existing shopping streets and identified various barriers in the shopping streets from the perspective of users. This study continues where that study left off, gathering basic knowledge on problems and issues facing shopping streets from the perspective of the operators of the stores that make up the shopping streets.

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