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The community reach of the People’s Network (30,000 terminals in over 4,000 public libraries) provides a powerful delivery mechanism for e‐Initiatives. Public libraries have an opportunity to utilise the network beyond the standard provision of public Internet access. The People’s Network is already viewed as a “ready made” outlet by many providers or co‐ordinators of electronic content. This article examines how the challenge of channelling content to all libraries in England through a single interface and across a diverse set of library networks is being approached by the People’s Network team at Resource.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the foundation and development of public relations education (PRE) in Australia between 1950 and 1975.

This paper utilises Australian-held primary and official industry association material to present a detailed and revisionist history of PR education in Australia in its foundation decades.

This paper, which locates Australia's first PRE initiatives in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in the 1960s, contests the only published account of PR education history by Potts (1976). The orthodox account, which has been repeated uncritically by later writers, overlooks earlier initiatives, such as the Melbourne-based Public Relations Institute of Australia, whose persistence resulted in Australia's first PR course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1964. So too, educational initiatives in Adelaide and Sydney pre-date the traditional historiography.

A detailed literature review suggests this paper represents the only journal-length piece on the history of PRE in Australia. It is also the first examination of relationships between industry, professional institutes, and educational authorities.

This paper aims to provide a description of a new service to be launched in England that will open up the holdings of public libraries to citizens and enable them to order items for home delivery.

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of a new service to be launched in England.

The paper finds that such a service is desired by stakeholders and will enhance the ability of citizens to identify and obtain books that are currently inaccessible to them.

The first public presentation of a service from an author who is responsible for the overall development of the project.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the entrepreneurial attitudes of upcountry vegetable farmers in Sri Lanka with respect to the characteristics of innovation, opportunity seeking and risk taking and considers their implications for rural development efforts.

The study was carried out in the hilly areas of the Badulla district in the Uva Province of Sri Lanka. Primary data were collected through a survey using a researcher-administered questionnaire as the data collection instrument and the individual farmer as the unit of analysis.

Most vegetable farmers in the upcountry areas were found to be attitudinally entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial attitudes were determined more by educational background and farming experience than age, gender, extent of farmland, type of farming and ownership of farmland. Farming experience related positively with innovation, opportunity seeking and risk taking, but farmers’ educational background showed no significant association with innovation.

It is suggested that farmer-owned companies with appropriate institutional arrangements could reduce transaction costs for buyers, and introduce accessible rural finance schemes to enhance provision of assets and technology. Such a rural setting would gain from initiatives on marketing alternatives and entrepreneurial skill development. Future research could benefit from analysis of the financial and social performance and entrepreneurial skills of vegetable farmers.

The entrepreneurial attitude of farmers is an under-researched area of study particularly in the Sri Lanka context. Rural development initiatives could target entrepreneurial farmers based on these criteria to achieve maximum production impact. However care needs to be taken to consider the potential distributive impact of such targeting on farmers regarded as non-entrepreneurial.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of recent developments in remote document supply and related matters in the UK.

The paper is based on a range of articles, reports, papers and web sites.

Fundamental changes are required for the British Library to continue to support RDS to HE libraries. A Steering Group has been established to agree and then recommend these changes to the sector. Problems caused by encryption continue to dog RDS processes and innovation, and can be felt in other areas such as digitisation. Switching software appears to offer a short‐term solution for RDS, while a longer‐term resolution will depend on publishers following the lead of the music industry. For digitisation, Google appears set on exerting tighter control over an ever‐increasing amount of content.

The paper provides a summary of views regarding document supply.