IFLA General Conference, 1986. Collections and Services Division. Section: Official Publications. Papers.

This document comprises two papers on official publications which were presented at the 1986 IFLA general conference. In "Japanese Official Publications," Yoshitaro Tanabe (Japan) discusses several aspects of official publications in Japan, including problems encountered by the Printing Bureau in printing, publishing and distribution, legal deposit, acquisition by domestic libraries, and bibliographies and databases. Appendices include government of Japan organization charts, extracts from the National Diet Library (NDL) law, and listings of the NDL supply of official publications on exchange in 1985 and bibliographies of Japanese official publications. In "Publishing in Japan--Its Past, Present, and Future," Shigeo Minowa (Japan) outlines the formation and development of the book trade in Japan in a historical perspective and describes the level of industrialization the trade has currently attained. In addition, the relationships between social modernization and the "publishing takeoff," and between the revolution of book marketing and the fall of book prices are examined, and the contributions of distributors and the future of publishing in Japan are discussed. Statistical information is appended. (KM)