Cooperative programmes and networking in Japanese academic libraries Available to Purchase

The Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan envisioned a scholarly information system in 1978. In order to realize the system, the Ministry established Foreign Periodical Centres and the National Center for Science Information System (NACSIS). They have been playing vital roles in most of the recent cooperative programmes and networking in Japanese academic libraries. Foreign Periodical Centres and NACSIS’ several systems – NACSIS‐CAT, NACSIS‐ILL, NACSIS‐IR and NACSIS‐ELS are introduced. NACSIS‐CAT, which is a system of online shared cataloguing, is one of the most successful networks. But NACSIS‐ILL, which is an online interlibrary loan (ILL) system, is not fully functioning as an ILL system because lending and borrowing of the library material is not a normal service among Japanese academic libraries.