レファレンスサービス 医学図書館におけるレファレンス・サービスの変遷

Abstract

Reference service originated in the United States of America in the late 19th century and developed almost exclusively only in the country of its origin. In Japan, reference service in medical libraries began in the Meiji period and developed slowly during the Taisho period to the early Showa period. However, on the whole, there was little progress in the provision of such reference service in Japan until the end of the Second World War. After the war, democracy was introduced in Japan, and drastic changes occurred in the library world. While new library services were introduced, old systems were revised. American-style reference service was practiced in CIE libraries that were established throughout Japan according to the GHQ policy. In 1953, the Ministry of Education issued guidelines for improvements in national university libraries in which the post of a Chief Reference Librarian was specified and reference service was handled by an independent section in national universities. A reference room was set up at the University of Tokyo in 1963, where the old organization had long posed obstacles to the development of library services. With a few exceptions, university libraries were inactive in the old organization, but reference service was actively begun after the war. The development of computer technology in the 1950s brought about dramatic changes in the conventional manual-based reference service. This paper describes the history of reference service in medical libraries and examines the effects of computer technology since the 1950s on the development of medical libraries.