This paper discusses trends in the research activities of health science librarians by analyzing the subjects of 192 articles in the Igaku Toshokan and 257 articles in the Bulletin on the Medical Library Association (BMLA) . Matheson's report in 1982 had a strong impact on many health science librarians. On the basis of her recommendation, Columbia University and other universities presented the Integrated Academic Information Management Systems (IAIMS) and Integrated Library Systems (ILS) project in the BMLA . The librarian's research on traditional activities, such as classification, cataloging, audio visual and circulation services have clearly been decreasing since the middle of the 1980s in both the BMLA and the Igaku Toshokan . Furthermore, research on information retrieval has been focused on enduser searching and CD-ROM rather than on-line bibliographic searching.