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Dear Friends and Colleagues, members of EAJRS, After what looked like a prolonged autumn, with exceptionally mild weather, winter has finally set in. It is about time, says the gardener, and I believe him, but it all looks so far away now from the pleasant late summer we enjoyed in Venice. Another year has indeed revolved. We are sending you our best wishes for a peaceful and blissful Christmas time and we wish you on behalf of the board of the EAJRS, a happy and fruitful New Year 2007. Last September we had a most pleasant and stimulating conference in Venice, and we take this opportunity to thank Prof. Magda Abbiati, head of the Department of East Asian Studies and Dr. Laura Moretti for their fine organisation, hospitality and generosity. We express our sincere gratitude to all of you for joining us in such great number in Venice and for the contributions you made both in scholarly and convivial terms. At the general meeting in Venice, we failed to decide on next year’s venue, but we noted down a proposal for holding the 2007 conference at the Universita Pontificia Salesiana in Rome. In the mean time, there have been some developments, notably the proposal from the library of the Istituto Giapponese di Cultura (Japan Foundation) in Rome to act as local organizer. We could hardly have wished for a better venue and a better organizer. We have therefore accepted the gracious offer. The date remains as agreed upon in Venice: Wednesday 19 to Saturday 22 September 2007. Mr. Omori, vice-director of the Istituto Giapponese di Cultura, Ms. Ikuko Kaji, librarian, and Sergio Levi, will be our contact persons. During the conference we will also pay working visits to at least two important libraries that own Japan-related holdings. In February 2007 we will make an exploratory visit of the premises at the Istituto Giapponese di Cultura in order to make all necessary arrangements with the local organizers. We will also make prospective visits to important libraries to select for our conference programme. We have filed our application for financial support to the Japan Foundation, and so has the UK Japanese librarians committee, who, it will be recalled, are preparing to organize a workshop for librarians at Tenri University library over a three years’ period. We like to renew our appeal to help widening our membership, and we urge all present members to use the portal site as much as possible as a means for easy contact and exchange. We hope that you like the availability of the abstracts and/or proceedings on the renewed EAJRS portal site and needless to say, we are open to all suggestions for improvement. As in former years, we will ask our local organiser to check out various hotels near the conference site in Rome and block a number of rooms, but experience has taught us that many among you make their own reservations independently and individually, and there is no reason why everyone who wishes so would not go on doing it his or her own way. Although the location of the venue will hopefully elicit many presentations on the situation of Japanese resources in Italy, the conference will not have a restricted special topic. We want to give full scope to all possible issues and recent developments in the field of Japanese resources. As in former editions of the conference, we hope that specialists from Europe, Northern America and Japan will attend in great number, but we also hope that a few participants from Korea and Taiwan will find their way to Rome. Detailed information on the particulars of this conference will be forwarded to you in due time, but we would like to ask everyone reading this message to pass on its contents to colleagues or interested persons who they know or believe are not on our mailing list (yet). Do not hesitate to send us the address and email address of anyone you feel may be interested and is not on our mailing list. We are looking forward to your continuing support and enthusiasm in 2007. Cordial greetings from W.F. Vande Walle, chairman, Paul Wijsman, secretary