Library and Information Science

The Japan Medical Library Association has already issued five editions of the Union List of Medical Periodicals for medical libraries in Japan since 1932. Because, of the rapid growth and changes of journal collections in the libraries affiliated with the Association, however, the compiling work of the Union List now exceeds the capacity of manual processing. The Association took more than two years to accomplish the compilation of the fifth edition of the Union List and many librarians had to spend too much time to accomplish this work. Even though these librarians made great efforts toward the completion of the current edition, it became clear in the that the latest data of the holdings which we needed most were frequently not included in List.

Under these circumstances, the writer designes a computer-assisted system which will compile the Union List of Medical Periodicals in medical libraries in Japan. This system carries out the work from collecting data from the libraries through dissemination of information about the current holdings. He gives especially careful considerations about descriptions of data elements composing the computer-oriented system. When all data on the holdings of the affiliated libraries are fed into the system, available is ifnformation about the holdings data not only in the nation, but also in a region or in a subject field, such as regional union catalogs and accession lists arranged by subjects or by publishing countries for the use of acquisitions control among the member libraries. Because of flexibility of its data descriptions procedures, the system can be utilized for compilation of not only the Union List of Medical Periodicals but also union lists of other library groups in different subject fields.