Library and Information Science

This paper clarifies the purpose of researchers who write scholarly books. Analyzing contents of scholarly books in the field of Japanese literature, economics, and medica1 science, the relations between functions of scholarly books and characteristics of research fields are examined.

The main results are as follows;

1. 1) In the field on both Japanese literature and economics, most scholarly books are written by single authors. They use books as the media to publish results of their own researches carried out for more than ten years.
2. 2) In economics, researchers use books as the media to review the fields. These books are written by more than one authors. Contents of those books consist of independent topics based on their research results in many case.
3. 3) In Medical science, researchers do not use books but scholarly journals to publish their research results. Books are used as the media to sum up knowledge of the field. These books are written by multiple authors who research different themes, and usually are functioned as textbooks for basic education.