The Council on the Legal Deposit System, which was established in March 1997 as an advisory organ of the National Diet Librarian to examine the Japanese legal deposit system in the 21st century, set up the Digital Publications Committee to examine especially issues of dealing with digital publications (a related article is on No.103).

In the second meeting of the council in November 1997, the committee reported their conclusions so far drawn from examination of the present state and tendency of digital publications, functions of a national library and legislative issues of legal deposit of the publications. The report said that packaged digital publications including CD-ROMs are to be collected through legal deposit, which requires amendment of the law, and that publications on the network are not to be the subject of legal deposit for the time being, and should be acquired selectively by contract.

The council will hold its third meeting in March 1998 to discuss the final report to be made by the committee, and is going to submit its own interim report in May. Materials related to the council including a full text of this report will be available, only in Japanese, through the Internet on the National Diet Library Web site (http://www.ndl.go.jp/index.html).