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Argues that women's history is a player in the history of collection development, although its awards are obscured in library history. Pioneer women librarians shaped children's collections beyond the structural initiation of service into an expanded vision of service, a sense of transgressing boundaries in order to advocate and mediate for children and their literature. Considers the philosophy and work of Caroline Hewins and Anne Carroll Moore, which presents a paradigm of building collections for a larger community that is now part of the planning process for public libraries and an ongoing model of activist service through collections.

This paper describes the background to and preliminary results of a survey of CD‐ROM users in the UK. Questions were asked about the type of organisation, equipment, CD‐ROM discs currently being used or evaluated, and management of the CD‐ROM installation. A picture of the current use of CD‐ROM is built from the replies.

Communications software has traditionally been used in the library environment for online searching to retrieve bibliographic and, more recently, numerical and textual information. Using microcomputers has become widespread for such work as their local storage and processing power can make online searching faster and more convenient than using a dumb terminal. It also enables data to be downloaded. Many packages have been developed which provide the features needed by online searchers and a recent trend has been for online hosts and database providers to produce software geared to their own systems.

This paper, based on the experience of running a workshop on library automation in Estonia combined with visits to several major libraries, outlines the main problems faced by Estonian libraries in recent years and the steps taken to improve the situation. It provides insight, through analysis of articles published by (mostly) Estonian professionals into the problems of identifying the problems — lack of funds, lack of qualifications, organisational problems, and searching for possible solutions: networking, resource sharing, use of information technology and international co‐operation. A description of the role of the Open Society's Regional Library Programme in supporting these steps and details about some of the Estonian libraries that were visited prior to the workshop complete the picture of a varied library landscape, richer for its splendid new national library in one of the smallest states on the outskirts of the new Europe.

In a celebrated article, published in 1990, McSean and Law described CD‐ROM as a ‘transient technology’. This paper provides a starting point for a general discussion on the future role of CD‐ROMs in libraries. An examination of the CD‐ROM market and the range of applications available highlights the popularity of the medium. Technical limitations remain, however, and in some subject areas the lack of currency of the data is a significant drawback. Alternative sources of electronic information, including online, tape leasing, BIDS and storage on hard disc, are explored. Although these alternatives are superior to CD‐ROM in some respects, the latter has a promising future particularly for small full‐text applications, multimedia, and small specialised databases. CD‐ROM should be seen, in general terms, as a replacement for printed material rather than a competitor to other forms of electronic information.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problem of information and knowledge management (IKM) in higher education institutions. The research aims to determine the way in which the knowledge resources of a higher education institution are managed. The author intends to define how the information system is shaped and how information and knowledge are used in the reporting processes and for decision-making efficiency.

In total, 38 university administration employees from six higher education institutions in Poland participated in the study. Information barriers and benefits resulting from the implementation of the central reporting system “POL-on” were identified by using the sense-making technique. The purpose of the interviews was to determine the procedural and behavioural conditions of the reporting and decision-making processes in higher education institutions in Poland.

This paper suggests four characteristics of IKM in higher education institutions. A link between the information culture of the institution, its size and structure as well as the adopted model of IKM is demonstrated.

The main contribution of this paper is to introduce a framework for studying the IKM in higher education institutions from the perspective of information culture. Higher education institutions have developed different styles of striving for efficiency regarding decision making and reporting in administration. The IM and KM are now proved to be an integrated process in administrative activities of higher education institutions.

Compact Disc — Read Only Memory (CD‐ROM) was launched as a commercial product in 1985. It offered a high‐capacity, robust, reliable data storage and distribution medium, which conformed to a series of internationally‐agreed technical standards. The rise in the number of CD‐ROM titles published commercially has been rapid. From just 12 titles in 1985, there are at least 10,000 available today. Many libraries and information services have therefore had to confront the problem of loading, managing and updating large numbers of CD‐ROM discs in a way that allows access by a range of different users. The attachment of CD‐ROMs to a Local Area Network (LAN) is one way in which this can be approached.

Speak to anyone who has been involved in library automation in the UK and it's a pretty safe bet that they are familiar with VINE and have probably contributed to it in some shape or form over the years. Produced for librarians by librarians, it has always aimed to be practical, topical, and objective in approach whilst inevitably reflecting the individual style of each of its successive editors (see the roll‐call at the end of this article). Its sometimes erratic publishing schedule may be legendary, but the commitment to four issues a year has been met, with the occasional bonus one or two in the early days. It is a unique and somewhat idiosyncratic journal which forms a recognised part of library automation publishing: as reported in the editorial of VINE 95, a survey carried out by Graeme Muirhead(1) found VINE to be the most popular journal read by systems librarians.

The Palais du Congress in Brussels was the venue in early May for the European Conference on Library Automation and Networking bringing together close to 700 participants from thirty countries. The Conference was supported by UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the European Cultural Foundation, the Commission of the European Communities, and a whole host of national and international institutions and companies too long to list in this brief article. The suppliers added interest to the Conference and the exhibition area was always full of conference attendees trying to find out about the latest available products and services.

Those of us who work, or have ever worked, in academic or public libraries know “Granger” — formerly Granger's Index to Poetry and now The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry — which is almost as old as this century. As it is the only substantial index to verse for adults, it cannot be evaluated by comparison; so a reviewer is already halfway to redundancy.