After a first year-long phase that concentrated on connecting the participating organizations in the United Kingdom to NACSIS-CAT, this project entered a second phase from April 1992 to March 1994, in which actual NACSIS-CAT access started. During this time, in order to assist the project, NACSIS extended the hours in which NACSIS-CAT was available to the participating organizations in the United Kingdom, to allow for the time difference, and also extended further help by making NACSIS-IR available and providing a UK version of a CD-ROM to the participating organizations. The number of records being submitted to NACSIS-CAT from participating organizations in the United Kingdom is currently rising, and the total number of records of documents and journals has exceeded 40,000. The initial objective of creating a union catalog of Japanese-language materials is nearing completion and further research and development are proceeding.
On February 16, 1994, as the end of the second phase approached, both the participating organizations in the United Kingdom and NACSIS agreed at a meeting on the project held by the British Library that the period of the project should be extended for a further year, and that the final year should be used for transferring communications between the UK and Japan onto the Internet and finishing the project. It is expected that this final year will be used to investigate the networking situation of the participating organizations and to encourage them to move onto the Internet, and also to encourage the completion of the union catalog of Japanese-language materials in the United Kingdom.