摘要：There is neither a national medical library nor a formal nationwide interlibrary loan network in Japan. Of the total number of JMLA libraries, however, 94% receive informal borrowing requests made by hospital libraries. This study was designed to characterize what type of hospitals requested photocopied articles from JMLA libraries and what type of articles were sought by these hospitals. During 1981, 113 hospitals libraries throughouts Japan made 6021 requests for copies of journal articles from 22 JMLA libraries in the Kanto area. These included 1371 different journal titles. The percentage of borrowing requests from hospitals is 5.1% in the total ILL lending transactions of the 22 libraries. This study revealed that 94 hospital libraries (83%) belonged to one or more of the followiwg major hospital library organization: the Japan Hospital Library Association, the Association of Kinki Hospital Libraries and the Library Group of the Japan Hospital Association. On the contrary, 19 hospitals (17%) did not belong to any of them. Fifteen hospital libraries (13%) requested more than 100 photocopied articles, but 57 (50%) requested less than 10. Half of the requested articles were published between 1976 and 1981. Of the total borrowing requests, 635 (11%) could have been supplied from local hospital libraries, but only JMLA libraries could have filled the remaining 5385 (89%) requests. The 108 foreign journals and 24 Japanese journals requested most frequently were listed.
