Library and Information Science

In spite of a great variety of the actual book selection policies among public and university libraries, there must be something common among them as regards selection and purchase procedures, if they are supported by national or local governments. Fiscal laws and regulations prescribe, in principle, to make a contract of purchasing any commodities accompanied by a well reasoned purchase plan.

But the contractor is also exempted from such a provision when the sum does not exceed one million yen (about 4,000 U.S. dollars) at a time, in order to alleviate excess formalities. So the librarians usually make use of this exception rule and purchase books in smaller lots.

Under these circumstances Japanese librarians become indifferent to fiscal laws and regulations and eventually untrained to work up a book selection policy and purchase plans. As the underlying principles of fiscal law provisions are efficient and proper use of budgets, we must find out a common field both in the legitimate procedures of book purchasing and in the book selection and collection building processes established in librarianship by improving librarians' understanding of fiscal regulations and reinforcing their professional capacity.