56th General Assembly held

The 56th General Assembly of the Japan Association of National University Libraries was held at Toki Messe (Niigata Convention Center) on June 19, 2009 hosted by Niigata University Library.

After the opening address by Professor Motoo Furuta, President of JANUL, the greeting from Dr. Fumitake Gejyo, President of Niigata University and Professor Toshifumi Yata, Director of Niigata University Library. Before the proceedings, Professor Uematsu, Director of Tsukuba University Library and Professor Nomura, Director of Shinshu University Library were nominated for the chairperson and the vice-chairperson, respectively.

In the proceeding, firstly the president, vice-president, board libraries and auditors were introduced, and there was the progress report of the Association's activities after the 55rd General Assembly last June.

Then the following issues were discussed: the FY2008 financial results; the proposed business plans for FY2009 (such as, reform of the committees and subsidized projects for regional associations); the proposed budget for FY2009; and so on.

Next, Mr. Toru Funahashi, Director of Information Division, Research Promotion Bureau, MEXT explained the activities of the Subdivision on Science, Council for Science and Technology, the status of FY2009 special education and research budgets and the summary of the supplemental budgets; the FY2010 budget request; the report of "FY2007 Survey of the Scholarly Infrastructures", and so on.

Further, the awarding ceremony of 2009 JANUL Award was performed. Tsukuba University Library and Okayama University Library won the award for their "Construction of the promotion site with the library promotion video as core contents" and "Education and promotion project of the library's rare book collections" respectively.

In the afternoon, workshops was held and the following two topics were discussed actively; A: Development of e-journals and institutional repositories as tools for reform of the learning information distribution; B: Library services in cooperation with the learning and educational activities. In the topic A, the participants exchanged views on the future tactics and direction to construct a new model for stable supplying of e-journal and to construct sustainable institutional repositories. In the topic B, based on the anecdotal reports of the advanced libraries and the opinion as a teacher, the future of library services in cooperation with learning and educational activities was discussed actively.