Library and Information Science

The typical industrial library in Japan used to belong to the technical laboratory, investigation department, or factory of the founding enterprise, and to render services to its users of the organization to which it belongs. It is considered that these services are firmly established especially in the research libraries.

On the other hand, it is a recent trend to set up a new library in the administrative headquarters of the enterprise. This new library is requested to develop new types of services which provides the information needed by the administration. In order to do so information acquired by the library is analysed, evaluated and synthesized.

This new tendency has been revealed from the data collected through a user study carried out in a certain company, and requires a wider range of acquisitions of source materials and some changes in the job of the librarian. The librarian in the administrative headquarters will be in future required to take the role of more than information officers. The author hopes to make new models by analysing accumulated data collected from user studies.