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This paper examines results of a survey concerning online users' attitudes and perceptions of the ease of use and other factors of Lockheed's DIALOG and SDC's ORBIT command or query languages. Analysis of the results shows that, along with such factors as the number of files and system first learned, perceived ease of use of a command language is an important consideration in user preference for a given system, and therefore is one of the important reasons why most users prefer DIALOG.

The publication rate and volume of bibliographies on women's studies in the past ten years have grown dramatically. As an interdisciplinary field of scholarship, women's studies covers a vast array of subjects. For this reason, most of the bibliographies being published are fairly specialized. That is, they cover specific aspects of women's studies such as history or education. The very excellent Esther Stineman work, Women's Studies: A Recommended Core Bibliography (discussed more fully below), which has a cutoff date of 1978, includes 90 bibliographies itself. This author has easily identified nearly 30 women's studies bibliographies published separately since 1978 and many more soon to be published.

The past decade has seen an enormous amount of publication and research focusing on the concerns of women. As feminist scholarship expands, publication about women and women's issues will continue. So much has been produced that it is nearly impossible to keep abreast of it all. And it is equally difficult to adequately evaluate these publications. Because the literature on women now is so vast, a brief list of essential resources of interest to public libraries is needed. Rather than attempt to name many specific titles for a core circulating collection I have concentrated on very basic reference tools. Women's studies journals are not included. See Serials Review 5:4.

We've been living in a homogenous world, you know a world centered on and seen through the language perceptions of men. The consequences of this for everything that we take for granted, for all our assumptions are very deep. Feminism, in the sense I use it, is a radical complexity thought in the process of transforming itself. It is a kind of breaking open of not only the oversimplification but of the lies and the silence in which so much of human experience has been cloaked. Too much has been left out, too much has been unmentioned, too much has been made taboo. Too many connections have been disguised or denied. (Interview with Adrienne Rich, Christopher Street, Jan. 1977, pp. 9–16.)

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

This column has always intended to provide in‐depth, comparative reviews of abstracting services, indexes, serial bibliographies, yearbooks, directories, almanacs and other serial tools which would normally be housed in reference departments. For the purposes of this column, reference serials are materials which must meet two rather flexible requirements: they must be useful as reference sources and they must be issued as serials or be titles which are superseded periodically by new editions.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This is a resource guide for librarians who wish to gather books and other materials to use in promoting National Women's History Week or, as it will be soon, National Women's History Month. The emphasis is on history rather than on current women's issues. Most of the materials cited have appeared within the past ten years, but a few important older works are included as well.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether online communities meet their potential of providing environments in which social relationships can be readily established to help patients cope with their disease through social support. The paper aims to develop and test a model to examine antecedents of the formation of virtual relationships of cancer patients within virtual communities (VCs) as well as their effects in the form of social assistance.

Data were collected from members of virtual patient communities in the German‐speaking internet through an online survey to which 301 cancer patients responded. The data were analyzed with partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling.

Virtual relationships for patients are established in VCs and play an important role in meeting patients' social needs. Important determinants for the formation of virtual relationships within virtual communities for patients are general internet usage intensity (active posting vs lurking) and the perceived disadvantages of CMC. The paper also found that virtual relationships have a strong effect on virtual support of patients; more than 61 per cent of the variance of perceived social assistance of cancer patients was explained by cancer‐related VCs. Emotional support and information exchange delivered through these virtual relationships may help patients to better cope with their illness.

In contrast to prior research, known determinants for the formation of virtual relationships (i.e. marital status, educational status, gender, and disease‐related factors such as the type of cancer as control variables, as well as general internet usage motives, and perceived advantages of CMC as direct determinants) played a weak role in this study of German cancer patients. Studies on other patient populations (i.e. patients with other acute illnesses in other cultures) are needed to see if results remain consistent.

Participants and administrators of patient VCs have different design criteria for the improvement of VCs for patients (e.g. concerning community management, personal behaviour and the usage of information in online communities). Once the social mechanisms taking place in online communities are better understood, the systematic redesign of online communities according to the needs of their users should be given priority.

Little research has been conducted examining the role of VCs for social relationships and social networks in general and for patients in particular. Antecedents and effects of virtual social relationships of patients have not been sufficiently theoretically or empirically researched to be better understood. This research combines various determinants and effects of virtual relationships from prior related research. These are integrated into a conceptual model and applied empirically to a new target group, i.e. VCs for patients.