No. 121, September 2001

Offline electronic publications
now available to the public

This is an abridged translation of the article of  the same title in the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 484

October 2000, offline electronic publications became subject to the Legal Deposit System. In order to provide these publications to the public, we installed hardware and set up a legal framework. Now everything is ready and offline electronic publications have been available to the public from July 5, 2001 including printout service. We have provided a number of CD-ROMs acquired through purchase in some of the special material rooms and this is the beginning of the full-scale service.

Outline of the service

(1) Opening of the Electronic Resources Room
The new Electronic Resources Room is in the Special Materials Room (4th floor of the Main Building). We provide some of the deposited offline electronic publications whose contents are mainly texts, in this room in the following:

(i) CD-ROMs in stacks (no printout service)

To use these CD-ROMs, please ask the library staff. You can read them on a stand-alone terminal in the room. 

(ii) CD-ROMs available in the CD-ROM changer (10 titles)

You can use these CD-ROMs directly. To printout, please select printout menu, and the data will be output in the Electronic Media Printout Counter in Reading Room 3 (1st floor of the Annex).

The Electronic Resources Room is open on weekdays and also the 3rd Saturday of the month.

(2) Other Special Materials Rooms 
Some purchased CD-ROMs and deposited CD-ROMs are available in the special materials rooms below: 
Reference Books Room, Official Publications Room, Science and Technology Materials Room, Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Room and Newspaper Reading Room

These CD-ROMs are mainly provided in the way explained in (1)-(ii) above. For details, please see the information for each room.

(3) Visual materials 
Deposited visual materials such as videotapes and DVDs are available in the Audiovisual Materials Room (2nd floor of the Main Building, approval required). Library staff will bring materials from the stacks.

Printout service

(1) For the CD-ROMs that are acquired through the legal deposit system, only one request per day for one item, not exceeding 20 sheets per request, is accepted.

(2) For the CD-ROMs that are acquired through purchase, a maximum of five requests per day, not exceeding 80 sheets per request, is accepted (the same as for other books and periodicals). Some CD-ROMs have restrictions on printout based on agreements with publishers.

(3) Products are available only on A4 paper and in black & white. Photocopy fee is 60yen per sheet tax extra.

(4) Photoduplication service by mail is not available for CD-ROMs.