53rd General Assembly held

The 53rd General Assembly of the Japan Association of National University Libraries was held at the Hitotsubashi Memorial Hall in National Center of Sciences on June 29, 2006 hosted by Hitotsubashi University Library and 97 universities and organizations were present.
After the opening address by Professor Kazuhiko Saigo, President of JANUL, the greeting from Professor Yoshiaki Nishimura, Vice President of Hitotsubashi University and Professor Osamu Saito, Director of Hitotsubashi University Library.
First, there was the progress report of the Association's activities after the 52nd General Assembly last June.
Then the following issues were discussed: acceptance of Tsukuba University of Technology and University of Toyama; election of the Directors; approval of the accounts and audit in FY2005; approval of the proposed business plans for FY2006; establishment of the regulation of JANUL Memorial Fund; approval of the proposed budget for FY2006; and so on.
Next, Mr. Noriyuki Matsukawa, Director of Information Division, Research Promotion Bureau, MEXT explained the 3rd Stage of Basic Program for Science and Technology, "Ideal Ways of Scholarly Information Infrastructures in the Future (A Report)", budgetary request for FY2007,the policy for the distribution of scholarly information, and so on.
Further, the awarding ceremony of 2006 JANUL Award was performed and Chiba University Library won the award on their activities in the construction, operation and making public available of "Chiba University Repository for Access to Outcomes from Research (CURATOR)."
In the afternoon, workshops was held and the following two topics were discussed actively: addressing issues on the digital resources, for example institutional repository; management issues of university library and recruitment and training of library staffs.
In the plenary session for summarizing the General Assembly, the followings were acknowledged as a result of the discussion in the workshops: the study on the issues about permission of copyrights is requested to Japanese Coordinating Committee for University Libraries; the discussion on the issues about digital resources other than copyrights is committed to Committee on Scholarly Information; ideal ways of assess indicator for university library management will be discussed in the directors meeting in Autumn; issues about qualification and expertise of staffs and recruitment and training of library staffs resulting from integration with IT staffs are committed to Committee of Human Resources.