Introduction 
At the beginning of 2004 the NDL released "NDL Vision 2004," which confirms its mission and roles, and clarifies four Priority Areas as follows:

Mission and Roles:

• Collects products of the intellectual activities of Japanese people on a broad scale, from printed materials to digital information, and constructs information resources as the common property of the people of Japan.
• Assists the legislative activities of the Diet by providing research and analysis services, and information on national political issues.
• Provides library services and guarantees access to information resources from now into the future to the executive and judicial branch of the national government and to the people of Japan.

Priority Areas: i. Enhancement of legislative support function
ii. Creation of digital archives
iii. Improvement of access to information resources
iv. Promotion of cooperation The first Priority Area defines the role as the parliamentary library, and I will omit further explanation here. Today I would mainly like to talk about the third Priority Area, referring to the second and fourth areas when necessary.

1.   Bibliographic services of the National Diet Library (NDL)
Within the framework of NDL Vision 2004, the NDL's policy on national bibliography can be seen in its description of bibliographic services. NDL Vision 2004 sets out mid-and-long-term basic policies for 5 to 10 years as an ultimate direction for the library as a whole. In order to achieve the goals specified in the Priority Areas in the NDL Vision 2004, the NDL sets short-term goals as Priority Objectives for each Priority Area to be fulfilled within 1-3 years. For example, for the third Priority Area, six Priority Objectives were defined for FY2004, such as extending opening days and hours and providing more legislative information on the Internet. With regard to the bibliographic services, Priority Objectives for FY2004 included a goal, "to provide increased number of bibliographic data covering extended collection areas," and Priority Objectives for FY2005 include a goal, "to provide increased number of bibliographic data and location data."

1.1   NDL-OPAC
These Priority Objectives for the bibliographic services have been or will be achieved by increasing the number of data provided through NDL-OPAC (National Diet Library Online Public Access Catalog). NDL-OPAC provides functions of searching and requesting materials held by the NDL. On-site users of the NDL can search NDL-OPAC terminals at the catalog hall and request materials for reading and copying. If you become a registered user, you can search and request copies of materials from your office and home PCs.

NDL-OPAC enables search for not only Japanese and other language monographs and serials but also electronic resources, Japanese and Chinese old materials, doctoral dissertations, maps, audiovisual materials, and others in various formats. In addition, the Japanese Periodicals Index is searchable through NDL-OPAC.

In FY2004 NDL-OPAC added a significant volume of bibliographic data, with the total increased from 10,300,000 to 13,940,000 entries by retrospective conversion and data migration from old databases. More than half of the added data are migrated data of western-language materials, technical reports, etc. However, it also included a considerable amount of newly created data of materials such as "Materials on the Allied Occupation of Japan" (about 260,000 entries) and the "Prange Collection" (about 30,000 entries). Retrospective conversion included collections of maps, Chinese classics, study-aid books, Chinese materials, etc.

In FY2005 we are working very hard at cataloging daily intakes and retrospective conversion while at the same time trying to further advance increasing location data. Here I would like to explain why location data are so important. The NDL now consists of three facilities, namely, Tokyo Main Library, Kansai-kan, and International Library of Children's Literature. If you like to read, say, a book titled "Record of workshop on authority control among Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages," without location data, you will not know at which facility you can find it, and neither will you know from which counter of the Tokyo Main Library you can receive the material. If the location data of each item can be confirmed on NDL-OPAC, it will save usersEtime and efforts. Providing location data with bibliographic data at the same time will ensure the access to the requested materials.

I would also like to talk about the Japanese Periodicals Index, which I believe is one of the most significant achievements of the NDL. NDL-OPAC provides the Japanese Periodicals Index which has indexed articles carried by about 10,000 titles of Japanese periodicals and contained about 6,480,000 data as of March 2005. Every year 400,000 data are added to the Index. Retrospective conversion of the Index has been under way, and we expect that 200,000 index data from "Japanese Periodicals Index: Science and Technology" (in printed-version) will be available within FY2005.

1.2   Japanese National Bibliography and JAPAN/MARC
I would like to start with the historical background of the Japanese National Bibliography and JAPAN/MARC.

1.2.1   The birth of the Japanese National Bibliography
The NDL has been publishing a national bibliography under the title, "Nihon Zenkoku shoshi" (Japanese National Bibliography). The history of the Japanese National Bibliography goes back to "Nohon Geppo" (monthly list of deposited materials) which started in 1948, the year of the NDL's foundation. At the beginning, the number of listed materials in "Nohon Geppo" did not even reach the half of the published materials in the country, and thus I am afraid that it is not appropriate to call it a "national bibliography."

"Nohon Geppo" changed its title to "Kokunai Shuppanbutsu Mokuroku" (catalog of domestic publications) in 1950, showing the NDL's renewed commitment to include all the publications published in Japan. "Kokunai Shuppanbutsu Mokuroku" was monthly, but there was a plan to publish annual cumulative editions, which meant that the NDL had intended to make it clear that it would produce a national bibliography. "Kokunai Shuppanbutsu Mokuroku" changed its title to "Nohon Shuho" (weekly list of deposited materials), and again in 1981 to the present title, "Nihon Zenkoku Shoshi" (Japanese National Bibliography Weekly List).

1.2.2   JAPAN/MARC
JAPAN/MARC, a machine-readable form of the Japanese National Bibliography, has provided bibliographic data of Japanese monographs since April 1981. Also JAPAN/MARC(S) has provided bibliographic information on domestic serials since August 1988, and JAPAN/MARC(A) has provided authority name files (Japanese authors) since October 1996.

1.2.3   Promptness of Japanese National Bibliography
There are four basic requirements for national bibliographies: promptness, minuteness, completeness, and reliability. The first requirement, promptness, has been a problem; in the past the interval between the receipt of deposited materials and their appearance in the Japanese National Bibliography once took more than half a year. However, according to the sample survey conducted in November 2004, 99.6% of Japanese monographs and serials were included in the Japanese National Bibliography within 60 days from accession. We can see here that one of the objectives in the third Priority Area was turned into reality.

1.2.4   Minuteness of the Japanese National Bibliography
The policy on minuteness of the Japanese National Bibliography changed in April 2002. Before that, the printed version of the Japanese National Bibliography carried the whole bibliographic data including description, headings, call numbers, etc. However, the web version of the Japanese National Bibliography, which became available from April 2002, has given priority to an easy and simple view of bibliographic data, and therefore does not provide such minute data as shown in the printed version. For example, the web version does not give most of the information in the general notes, contents notes, author headings, and call numbers.

On the other hand, we put more efforts into creating more detailed bibliographic data which are provided through JAPAN/MARC and NDL-OPAC. In providing bibliographic data on the Internet, the Japanese National Bibliography only does not seem to be adequate in achieving the required minuteness, but together with NDL-OPAC we believe that the NDL has achieved more minuteness than before.

1.2.5   Completeness of Japanese National Bibliography
Coverage of materials to be included in the Japanese National Bibliography used to center on printed materials such as monographs and serials. In recent years, however, the coverage has been extended to include materials in various media as shown below:

• since March 1999  microforms, "packaged" electronic resources, graphic  materials, sound recordings, etc
• since January 2003  music scores (sheet material)
• since February 2003  music sound recording, audiovisual materials
• since March 2003  maps (sheet material), residential maps

1.2.6   Reliability of Japanese National Bibliography
It can be naturally assumed that bibliographic data in the Japanese National Bibliography and JAPAN/MARC should be reliable as they are produced by a national library and based on standards such as cataloging rules and classification schemes. However, when only the printed version of the Japanese National Bibliography was available, it was mostly purchased by libraries and was not easily available elsewhere. The lengthy time lag between the time of publication and its appearance in the bibliography was also an obstacle to prevent further use of the bibliography. JAPAN/MARC also was only used by institutions which owned large-scale computers.

Even after the advent of J-BISC, the CD-ROM version of JAPAN/MARC, which can be handled by personal computers, JAPAN/MARC has failed to become familiar to the general public. Furthermore, many public and academic libraries have started to use the MARC records produced by private publication wholesalers, which further lowered the utilization ratio of JAPAN/MARC. Under these circumstances with this low usage, we were not yet in a position to proclaim the reliability of the Japanese National Bibliography.

Since the web version of the Japanese National Bibliography became available on the Internet, however, things have started to change. The easier it becomes to use, the more clearly people see its reliability, and the more people start to use it. We expect that the more people in Japan do information search on the Internet, the more they will recognize the reliability of the Japanese National Bibliography, which provides high-quality bibliographic information.

1.3   Other bibliographic services
The NDL provides other bibliographic services as follows:
1.3.1   NDL Asian Language Materials OPAC
The Asian Resources Division of the Kansai-kan is in charge of acquisition, cataloging and provision of Asian language materials. Searching Asian language materials can be done on the NDL Asian Language Materials OPAC. The NDL Asian Language Materials OPAC provides bibliographic information on monographs and serials in Chinese and Korean; monographs in Vietnamese, Mongolian, Indonesian, Malay, etc.

1.3.2   Union Catalogs
The NDL has been engaged in several projects related to union catalogs.
"National Union Catalog" is a database system which makes it possible to search bibliographic data of Japanese monographs owned by major public libraries and also makes interlibrary loan services among these libraries easy. With the consent of all the libraries that contribute data to the union catalog, the NDL has made the catalog open to the public since December 2004.

Besides this, the NDL has created the "Union Catalog of Newspapers in Japan Database,", "National Union Catalog of Braille & Recorded Books," and "International Library of Children's Literature Union Catalog of Children's Books," For these union catalogs, bibliographic data created by the NDL and provided through JAPAN/MARC and NDL-OPAC are used.

1.3.3   Collections of the Electronic Library
The NDL's website currently offers three main services on the menu of the NDL's "Collections of the Electronic Library," namely, "Rare Books Image Database,"  "Digital Library from the Meiji Era," and "Web Archiving Project (WARP)."  In addition to these electronic collections, in July 2005, the NDL released the prototype of the NDL Digital Archive Portal. It is expected that more functionality and services will be added to realize the objectives in the second Priority Area.

2.   Bibliographic control of the National Diet Library
2.1   Internal bibliographic control
In a major reorganization of the NDL in April 2002, the Bibliography Department was established, integrating the cataloging sections which had previously been in four separate departments. Within the Bibliography Department, the Bibliographic Control Division was newly set up to responsible for the following: to coordinate bibliographic data production work carried out within the library; to provide the bibliographic data and services as product; and to give overall bibliographic control to the whole library's operations.

Before the reorganization, bibliographic data production works were carried out in different sections based on the various systems and standards according to the characteristics of the collections to be cataloged. In tandem with the reorganization, the cataloging system was renewed so that bibliographic data were entered into one common database called the "integrated bibliographic database" according to a unified standard. Also the output method of data has been unified so that searching across different types of collections can be done in one session on NDL-OPAC.

Main tasks assigned to the Bibliographic Control Division include: maintenance of databases, creation and update of data entry standards, setting up a policy on provision of databases, and standardization of the bibliographic data production work of the library. The Division is also responsible for drawing up a plan of retrospective conversion and other planning work.

2.2   Domestic bibliographic control
Japanese bibliographic standards such as "Nihon Mokuroku Kisoku" (Nippon Cataloging Rules: NCR) and "Nihon Jisshin Bunruiho" (Nippon Decimal Classification: NDC) have been developed and maintained respectively by the Committee of Cataloging and the Committee of Classification of the Japan Library Association. Several staff members of the NDL have been appointed as members of the two committees. The NDL also has sent its staff members to other related organizations such as the Academic Content Committee of the National Institute of Informatics (NII), and the Research and Study Committee on Standardization of Information and Documentation (ISO/TC46 National Committee) of the Japanese Standards Association.

In addition to participating in the cooperative activities with individual institutions, the NDL has set up the "Conference on Bibliographic Control." This conference is held to discuss matters related to bibliographic data production and provision with related institutions, and to promote national bibliographic control and standardization of bibliographic services. Themes discussed in the past years are as follows:

•  2000  National Bibliographic Services in the Electronic Information Age
•  2001  Issues on Bibliographic Control
•  2002  Bibliographic Control of Online Publications: Current State of Metadata
•  2003  Name Authority Control
•  2004  Subject Headings Now and in Future: Subject Access in Network     Environment

The NDL also serves as the Japanese National Centre for ISSN. The NDL registers newly acquired domestic serials and assigns ISSN numbers to them. The NDL then sends bibliographic data of the registered serials to the ISSN International Centre in Paris. The number of serials registered in FY2004 was 959. The total number of registered serials amounts to 33,089.

The NDL also contributes data to Index Translationum, Unesco's project to produce a database of translated literature of the world. In FY2004 the NDL sent 6,667 entries to the database.

In recent years, especially in order to foster the staff’s competence to deal with electronic resources, the NDL invites experts from overseas countries to hold symposiums and exchange information with the staff.

One of the most important programs is a mutual visit program with other national libraries. The NDL has conducted mutual visit programs with the National Library of Korea (9 times, 1997- ), the National Assembly Library of Korea (2 times, 2003- ) and the National Library of China (24 times, 1981- ). The theme of the program differs each year, but themes related to cataloging and bibliographic control have been often adopted; i.e., "Cataloging by JAPAN/MARC and KORMARC" in the 1997 program with the National Library of Korea and "Acquisition, cataloging, and provision of networked information resources" in the 2003 program with the National Library of China.

3.2   Technical issues
There are always technical problems as long as information provision depends on information systems. The real problem is, in fact, not technology itself, but rather the matters connected with it. For example, the NDL provides the NDL Asian Language Materials OPAC in addition to NDL-OPAC. The reason why the OPAC for Asian language materials is separate from NDL-OPAC is the character code set. Technically it would be possible to deal with all the languages and characters in one system. However, when we changed the old system to a new system, we decided to use a separate system for Asian language materials for the time being, considering data migration from old database, implementation and application. Thinking that we need to accelerate the exchange of bibliographic information among China, Korea and Japan and to further advance international bibliographic control in the future, I must say that the NDL still has a long way to go.

Conclusion
The NDL has continued to work on the matters of long-term concern such as subject access, authority control, and retrospective conversion. These matters should be looked upon in a new light and should be adapted to the digital information environment. I believe that this job is very important and worthwhile. We will continue to work hard on cataloging and national bibliography policy of the 21st century into the future.