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Discusses the voluntary and co‐operative basis of interlibrary lending among libraries in the Netherlands. Outlines the co‐operative development of an automated Union Catalogue and ILL system. Examines the country′s involvement in international work on ILL system and moves towards further co‐operation in international interlending.

The aim of the RAPDOC project is to establish a system for the rapid electronic delivery of journal articles in full text to libraries and end‐users. Pica is currently co‐operating with 19 major libraries in The Netherlands on this project. On the basis of analyses of the existing interlibrary loan system, a core collection of 7,000 journal titles has been determined which is expected to fulfil 85 per cent of all requests for articles. Bibliographic information on all articles in the core collection will be added to the central database, providing an effective, in‐depth index to these journals. In addition to central storage, data will be downloaded to relevant local library systems. Speed of delivery is a major goal and at a later stage documents will be imaged electronically and delivered via SURFnet – the Dutch research network.

Union catalogues form the main instrument of interlending in the Netherlands. The most important ones are maintained by the Royal Library in The Hague, the Technical University at Delft, and the Library of the Agricultural University at Wageningen. On‐line library automation will have an increasing impact on interlending, and the challenge is being met by these libraries by setting up an on‐line catalogue of serials, monographs and conference publications combined with an on‐line system for handling interlibrary loan requests developed by the Project for Integrated Catalogue Automation (PICA). The first phase — the serials system — came on‐line in May 1983, and it is hoped the monograph system will be in operation by early 1986.

The Pica Library Automation Network originated from a research project on catalogue automation on behalf of some Dutch research libraries in the years 1969–1975. The name Pica derives from this project: Project for Integrated Catalogue Automation. Since 1976 Pica has been a non‐profit‐organisation, sponsored by the Dutch government, for the realisation of an online automated library network in The Netherlands, based on a centralised bibliographic database in which information is stored only once. Satellite library systems as well as other associated systems are provided with information from this central database. Duplication of efforts needs to be eliminated. In 1983 the following Pica‐systems became operational:

Describes the Irish interlending system and the functions of the (Irish) Library Council. Looks at the future of interlending and the findings of the Working Group of the Committee on Library Co‐operation in Ireland. Details the recommendations for future development accepted by this Committee.

Overviews recent statistical analyses in the field of interlending and document supply. Examines statistics from studies performed in Spain, South Africa, the Middle East, and the USA. Notes the significant impact of DOCLINE, the US National Library of Medicine′s automated interlibrary lending (ILL) request and routing system. Reviews the feasibility study for a pilot European interlending system. Looks at the issue of copyright. Provides examples of decentralised ILL systems found in Australia and South Africa.

Describes a number of experiments with electronic document delivery, and the copyright problems that are affecting its use. Considers the inadequacies of interlending for the user, the interlending in Eastern Europe and Australia. Outlines the impact of CD‐ROM on document supply and suggests that interlending can be a social, cultural and economic measure.

The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the history and development of transaction log analysis (TLA) in library and information science research. Organizing a literature review of the first twenty‐five years of TLA poses some challenges and requires some decisions. The primary organizing principle could be a strict chronology of the published research, the research questions addressed, the automated information retrieval (IR) systems that generated the data, the results gained, or even the researchers themselves. The group of active transaction log analyzers remains fairly small in number, and researchers who use transaction logs tend to use this method more than once, so tracing the development and refinement of individuals' uses of the methodology could provide insight into the progress of the method as a whole. For example, if we examine how researchers like W. David Penniman, John Tolle, Christine Borgman, Ray Larson, and Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu have modified their own understandings and applications of the method over time, we may get an accurate sense of the development of all applications.

Z39.50 is an information retrieval protocol. It has generated much interest but is so far little deployed in UK systems and services. This article gives a functional overview of the protocol itself and the standards background, describes some European initiatives which make use of it, and outlines various issues to do with its future use and acceptance. It is argued that Z39.50 is a crucial building block of future distributed information systems but that it needs to be considered alongside other protocols and services to provide useful applications.

The first European Conference on Library Automation and Networking was held in Brussels during 9–11 May, 1990 and was attended by about 700 participants from some 26 countries. Most participants came from the Northern European countries such as Scandinavia, Belgium, Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK, but there were also some from Southern Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece), as well as a few from Eastern Europe (e.g. Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia) and even three from the USSR. The conference was organised on the initiative of the EFLC, the European Foundation for Library Cooperation. EFLC was founded in 1986 and is an organisation of some 19 members, acting in a personal capacity, from nine countries. EFLC's aims are to strengthen library co‐operation in Europe and to manage libraries' information resources in order to improve user services in Europe. However, other European groups related to libraries also helped in the organisation of the conference; these were: