Library and Information Science

In the modern library, the reference work forms the center of its all activities. The need of developing the reference work has been stressed in this country, but there are not a few problems that interrupt the healthy development. One of those is deeply rooted in the poor organization of resources of reference materials. Therefore, in this article, the writer tried to clarify the tendency of publication of reference books through the statistical examination of reference books published in Japan.

The survey is limited to those published during 1954 and 1962, and each of the findings is classified as below: (1) The number of published items of both of books for general reading and of reference books; (2) the number of reference books published each year surveyed; (3) the type of reference books in each main class of Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC) table;（4) the number of reference books published in the categories of the generalia, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and industry; (5) comparison of change of average prices of both of books for general reading and of reference books; (6) the average price of reference books in each main class of NDC; (7) comparison of average prices of reference books and those for general reading in each main class of NDC; (8) the number of reference books of continuation type published on annual basis; (9) the number of the above type reference books in the categories mentioned above; (10) the average price of the reference books of the above type; etc.

The writer tried to make statistical survey and analysis of the above mentioned items and to prepare estimation for the future organization of the needed reference books.