No. 135, February 2004

Parliamentary Documents and
Official Publications Room opened!

This is an abridged translation of an article in
the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 512 (November 2003).

On December 1, 2003, the Parliamentary Documents and Official Publications Room was newly opened in the Annex of the Tokyo Main Library. The former Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Room and the Law, Politics and Official Publications Room have been integrated into this new room. The following materials are now provided in one place: statutes and parliamentary documents, official publications (of Japan and other major countries), documents of international organizations, and reference books on laws and politics.

1. New Open Access Materials

In the new room, commentaries on major Japanese statutes, court precedents and administrative matters have been added to the open access stacks to facilitate research by users.

Materials in Japanese giving an outline of foreign parliaments, statutes, and politics have also been added. In particular, materials on laws and administration, not only general introductory books but also commentaries on major categories, are included.
In future, introductory materials on the Japanese parliament, laws and politics in foreign languages will be added to the open access shelves. Provision of digital information resources in physical format such as CD-ROMs will be enhanced, as well as access to online resources, regardless of whether they are domestic or foreign, will be improved.

2. The website (http://www.ndl.go.jp/horei_en/index.html)

The websites of the former Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Room and the Law, Politics and Official Publications Room have been integrated into the new site for this room.
Our main purpose in constructing the new site is to enable users to obtain as much information as possible by themselves without coming to the library. Therefore, we give priority to introducing original information resources on the web over introducing materials held by our room.

The English version of our website has put special emphasis on Japanese parliamentary and legal information.

3. Index of Japanese Laws and Regulations Database

We are now preparing to release the index to the Japanese laws and regulations database on the web in early FY2004. This database includes laws and regulations after the enactment of Kobunshiki (February, 1886) in principle. This database contains four kinds of index information:

• Index to Japanese laws and regulations with amendments currently in force (the alternative of the printed version of the same kind of index which ceased publication in FY2003)
• Index to abolished laws and regulations with amendments
• List of enacted laws and regulations since the promulgation of Kobunshiki
• Index to bills (covering bills tabled since the 1st session of the Diet (1947))

The Index to bills and the other three indexes are to be linked to each other.
In the near future, an index to the laws and regulations in the early Meiji era before the Kobunshiki will be published in book form.

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