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This article is essentially a practical one, though the occasion for the talk on which it is based was a rather theoretical article (Orna & Stevens, 1991) about common ground between information scientists and information designers. That in turn arose from thinking about our practical experience as a partnership combining the two disciplines over many years.

Contends that information should be added to the six management functions enunciated by Henri Fayol in 1916. Considers some problems of information: the awareness problem; government neglect of the information function; inadequate indexing; poor administration in libraries; and information overload. Discusses the potential of information technology and pays attention to the difficulties experienced by developing countries.

The nation is in one of its worse crises for a long time and for this reason I intend to take a broad view of the role that research associations can play in helping industry rather than dwell overmuch on methodology of communication. If the present crisis is to be solved it will have to be through the products of industry. Industry is changing and is itself changed by the world situation oil recession. The balance between developed and developing countries may be changing.

Watch your language ‐ One of my earliest schoolday memories is of a sweet, angelic little girl who sat behind me in class and at frequent intervals shot her hand in the air to exclaim ‘Please Miss, Allan Bunch swore’. Ever since then I have learnt to mind my language and whenever I felt the need to say ‘bloody’, I made sure it was suffixed by ‘Tower’, which somehow rendered it harmless. I was reminded of this incident by a new pamphlet published by NALGO called Watch your language, which is not about swearing but is a guide to using non‐sexist language for NALGO members. It is a very helpful guide, since it not only points out words to avoid but suggests alternatives or alternative ways of presenting the same information without the male bias. So, ‘manpower’ becomes ‘workforce or staff’ and ‘man‐made’, ‘artificial’. The pamphlet also covers stereotyping of jobs, sex‐typing and patronising married women by such phrases as ‘the better half’,‘the little woman’ and so on. I am less certain of their advice that cartoons should not portray women in the usual stereotyped roles and treat them as objects of ridicule, since the purpose of a cartoon is to ridicule, tosatirizeor poke fun at a person or behaviour and it achieves its effects mainly through exaggeration and stereo‐typing. But the point is taken. I was disappointed not to find the answer to a problem that has bothered me for some time, namely how to address a non‐sexist letter to a corporate body. ‘Messrs’ is out since it's masculine, but ‘Dear Madams/Sirs’ or ‘Dear Mesdames/Messrs’ sound terribly clumsy. Copies of Watch your language are free from NALGO, 1 Mabledon Place, London WC1 9HJ.

I RECALL a seminar on the problems of teaching history where one speaker began by saying that until he was asked to prepare a paper, he had been cheerfully unaware any problems existed.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

IT WAS in the mid‐1970s when, having been in the habit for a year or so previously of commenting on public library authorities' annual reports in a partially analytical manner, I observed a decline in the arrival of the same in my post. A decline which has been maintained, I may add, and which has led me to the conclusion that, while it is OK on the sender's part if I remark how splendid has his service been, he would nevertheless be happier if the ammunition was withheld for me to observe that his annual loans cost x‐pence more each than those of such‐and‐such an authority!

This study aims to explore young German consumer perspectives of rental fashion platforms by studying their perceived benefits, potential barriers as well as preferred clothing categories to rent from. This “new” kind of shopping has not yet found great success among young German adults, although there is a substantial margin of growth for this generation.

This qualitative study was conducted through 24 in-depth semi-structured interviews with young female and male German consumers out of Gen Y and Z. The analysis of the data was supported by the software NVivo.

Results indicate that young German consumers value renting clothes for occasions, to frequently change up their wardrobe, out of sustainability aspects and because of efficiency and convenience reasons. However, an entry barrier to the use of rental platforms still persists through a lack of awareness and information, as well as price and high demand issues.

As the interview’s focus group was set to young German consumers, a generalization of the findings to consumers from other countries or out of other generations might be limited.

Managers first need to lower the currently existing entry barrier that prevents many consumers from renting fashion online by raising their awareness and providing them with sufficient information about the platform’s processes as well as their terms and conditions.

This research intends to better understand young German consumers’ attitude toward rental fashion platforms and why renting fashion has not yet achieved more success among them.The results first give managers helpful insights for implementing successful marketing strategies by focusing on spreading awareness among young German adults to stem current entry barriers. Second, these results serve as a basis for future quantitative research that deepens the understanding of the correlation of current findings with other variables (e.g. age, the importance of material possessions in consumers’ lives).