June 30, 2005
52nd General Assembly
The serials crisis that deepened further because of the sudden rise of the price of STM serials in 1990's has given a serious blow to the scholarly communications function. Meanwhile librarians in the world have developed global activities, such as SPARC and ICOLC, aiming at the recovery of the function.
In Japan, university libraries have also advanced the approach , such as the direct negotiation with foreign publishers by the JANUL Electronic Journal Taskforce and the cooperation with J-SPARC promoted by NII, aiming at the recovery of the scholarly communications function. However, the university budge can not be expected to increase largely because of the severe monetary situation in the country. On the other hand, although electronic journal publishers set out a price-cap system thanks to the negotiation by the Electronic Journal Taskforce, the price will been raised every year. If we librarians are now folding their hands, a decrease in the university budget and a rise in serials price will sooner or later invent the situation that brings the blank of scholarly information contents and gives the serious damage to the Japanese scholarly information infrastructure.
The symposium in this year places the focus on "Institutional repository" which is attracted as a new means for the recovery of global scholarly communications function and examines what are done by each university and how to work on this system.