June 19, 2003
To: Ms. Atsuko Toyama, Minister of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
President, Association of National University Libraries, Japan and,
University Librarian, University of Tokyo
Prof. Hiroshi Komiyama
A request for Enhancing the Infrastructures for Distribution of Scholarly Information
We really appreciate your exceptional understanding and kind consideration about developing and enhancing national university libraries.
After the cabinet decision on the "National Universities Corporation Law", national universities are now tackled with improving the quality of education and research and creating universities based on the global perspectives, rethinking the flow of conventional university reform as the best chance of the independent reform. The challenges of university libraries which are educational infrastructures for undergraduate and graduate students and are facilities for supporting research activities are to evolve continuously their functions as infrastructures for distribution of scholarly information and to provide services in response to needs for education and research in the university and the intellectual curiosity of the lifelong learning society in order to create universities as a base for "knowledge" which are international competitive under the information environment on the Internet evolving rapidly.
In the "Enhancing the Distribution Infrastructures for Scholarly Information (A Summary of the Deliberation)" submitted by the Working Group on the Infrastructures for Digital Research Information, Committee on Information, Science and Technology, Subdivision on R&D planning and Evaluation, Council for Science and Technology on March 12, 2002, university libraries are asked to play a role in realizing measures for collecting scholarly information to promote scholarly research and for promoting information dissemination across the world. The Information Division of the Research Promotion Bureau, MEXT established the "Liaison Group on Improving Library Functions for Dissemination of Scholarly Information" in May 2003 in response to the summary above and prompted the 15 libraries which are received the budget for digital library functions to improve their digital library functions and published a report summarizing the practical efforts for one year.
Although national university libraries will seek out the effective management, exert ourselves and develop our operations to accomplish our challenges using examples from the report, we would appreciate it that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology could continue to support us and consider the following kindly. We, the Association of National University Libraries, wish to request it.
1. Continued development of digital contents for scholarly research
Recently information resources in electric formats (electronic journals and electronic books) under the license agreements have took a mainstream of publications and have been used on the Internet more extensively. Further these resources have driven away the conventional paper-based information resources and now are the biggest information means of international scholarly communications.
Electronic journals have been particularly developed as the scholarly information media winning the researchers' support internationally thanks to their characteristics, such as the promptness, the high functionality as a hypertext and the dynamic presentation functions.
In Japan, costs of electronic journals in the fields of life science, information and communication, and nano-technology and material science which are three fields out of four strategic fields in the Basic Plan for Science and Technology have been budgeted during the two years and researchers in universities acclaimed it.
Although some improvement have achieved as stated above, the number of the budgeted electronic journal in the universities which are relative to these three fields are only 850 titles and the subscription status of electronic journals in Japan is not yet satisfactory as compared to the global level of scholarly information environment.
There is no question that the scholarly research materials which each university needs should be collected and provided basically in the responsibility of each university. But in order to promote scholarly research in Japan and to realize dissemination of high quality scholarly information, we wish to request the additional budget for the introducing electronic journals in the field of environmental science which is the only field left not been budgeted out of four strategic fields in the Basic Plan for Science and Technology as well as the budget for electronic journals in the fields of of life science, information and communication, and nano-technology and material science which are already budgeted.
2. Retaining the budget for libraries after the corporatization of national universities
We understand that the budget for library to each university is included in an operational grant to each university. Each national university library makes efforts, such as incorporating the library's demand into the medium-term goals and medium-term plans of the university, to get a proper evaluation in the university and to take a budget for developing the library activities. We think that it is essential to maintain and enforce the influential voice of library in the university that the total framework of the budget for libraries in MEXT is retained. We would appreciate it again that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology could take account of the special position of library on learning, education and research, such as services for students and researcher support functions, and continue to support us.