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As we stand on the threshold of a new millennium, it is tempting to speculate wildly about the impact of information technology on our information processing society. These millennial changes, historically, have ushered in great periods of optimism and it is typical of our century that today's optimism should be a technology optimism. We tend to believe that everything information technology can accomplish will be accomplished. Many believe that the pulling power of the technology is such that it will influence or even fundamentally alter underlying traits of human behaviour, redefining work, travel and leisure into new frameworks of activity governed by the digital paradigm.

When the EUROLEX researchers, in the early phases of legal information market research in this country, asked lawyers what information they expected to find on a legal database, the answer (once the concept of a database had been explained) came back clearly: ‘everything’. EUROLEX market research and the discrimination of lawyers both improved during the five year life of that project. Yet the answer contains a salutary lesson which is greater than a mere representation of the conservative nature of lawyers faced by a question they had not previously encountered and seeking an answer that had to be in some respects, at least, correct. The answer ‘everything’ also represents our heightened expectations of all electronic information delivery methods, our over‐hyped presumption that the simple addition of a new technology will provide information values which create knowledge and solve problems without the necessity for clear definition of both the knowledge and the problems on the way.

In this update we consider one of the hottest issues of 1995, with reference mainly to two commercial initiatives plus an academic prototype which could have commercial implications.

The IT industry in the UK, and thus by reduction the information content‐orientated industries which create the services and products used in the IT environment in homes, laboratories and offices, live in highly competitive times. The information industry is by definition a global industry, and increasingly the research and development of new products is seen upon a global basis. The continued development of a world communication system, with satellite links between concentrations of product and service implementation, ensures that this is the case. The major information economies of the USA and Japan strive for leadership in this environment. While not competitive in that league, the UK information economy is examined by government and industry alike to ensure that we have in the UK what it takes to establish a large indigenous information industry, creating high levels of information service employment and creating considerable export potential. Yet, while the American Information Industry Association (IIA) has recently appointed a Director of Globalisation, the UK industry remains more on the defensive than the offensive. Research and development activity has plateaued in most sectors and fallen in some, while government contributions overall are planned to fall dramatically. There was never a better time to look at the future of the information industry: research and development is the key to that future.

Invoices, bills of lading, purchase orders, and the tons of costly paper transactions written by businesses each year may become relics of the past as industries implement Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI, forecast to grow 73% annually over the next five years, could erode the stacks of paper files and bring many companies into the twenty‐first century with instant, direct transfer of business documents. A direct result of this growth, according to a new 199‐page report by Frost & Sullivan on The Electronic Data Interchange Market in the US. (♯A 1911) is the development of document format standards that enable computer‐to‐computer transmission of business forms to multiple industries.

General British Telecom awards £200 million contracts. Following intense international competition, STC Telecommunications and GPT‐GEC Plessey Telecommunications have been selected as suppliers for the nationwide extension of British Telecom's fibre optical network. Each will receive orders worth more than £100 million. The two companies are already supplying equipment to BT for the first phases of the network, known as Flexible Access Systems (FAS), which will eventually provide Britain's business community with the most advanced communications network of its kind.

The traditional role of librarians, securing and providing access to the archives of recorded knowledge, is being rapidly challenged on three fronts: the increasing technical sophistication of library users, the wide availability of information management software, and economic pressures on the growth of library collections. While we may argue endlessly about ‘turf’ and ‘ownership’ the real challenge is to forge a new ethic oflibrarianship which defies the stereotype of the passive provider of information services, explores new models of partnership with users and champions an interactive environment in which to create the library of the future. The Main Library at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is actively engaged in testing experimental models of the library of the future centred on dynamic user‐librarian interactions, versatile information technologies and on fostering creative partnerships with library users in different environments. These experiments are described and evaluated, and their implications for future development are explored.

The Food Bill has emerged from the Grand Committee on Trade, and will shortly be submitted, as amended, to the House of Commons. Whatever further amendments may be introduced, the Bill, when passed into law, will but afford one more example of the impotence of repressive legislation in regard to the production and distribution of adulterated and inferior products. We do not say that the making of such laws and their enforcement are not of the highest importance in the interests of the community; their administration—feeble and inadequate as it must necessarily be—produces a valuable deterrent effect, and tends to educate public opinion and to improve commercial morality. But we say that by the very nature of those laws their working can result only in the exposure of a small portion of that which is bad without affording any indications as to that which is good, and that it is by the Control System alone that the problem can be solved. This fact has been recognised abroad, and is rapidly being recognised here. The system of Permanent Analytical Control was under discussion at the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, held at Brussels in 1894, and at the International Congress of Hygiene at Budapest in 1895, and the facts and explanations put forward have resulted in the introduction of the system into various countries. The establishment of this system in any country must be regarded as the most practical and effective method of ensuring the supply of good and genuine articles, and affords the only means through which public confidence can be ensured.

Library managers are becoming increasingly concerned about document delivery systems because the means to identify and locate materials has improved faster than the ability to provide the materials and because a cut‐back in library budgets is forcing libraries to borrow or obtain more material from other sources. A new SPEC kit (no. 82, March 1982) has been produced on document delivery systems in use in the Association of Research Libraries. The September 1981 survey covered two categories of service: internal delivery — disseminating locally‐owned materials to users, and external delivery — acquiring materials from an outside source for local users. Some ninety ARL libraries responded to the survey by providing materials and information describing the methods they employ. These include telefax, requests via electronic mail and OCLC's interlibrary loan subsystem and online ordering from data‐bases. SPEC kit #82 contains twenty‐six documents, (101 pages) and is available for $15 (prepaid) from Systems and Procedures Exchange Center, OMS/ARL, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington DC 20036, USA.

First Australian Online Information Conference. ‘Information Online 86’, the First Australian Online Information Conference and Exhibition, to be held at the Hilton International Sydney from 20–22 January 1986, will present the professional and business market with two opportunities. The first, an Exhibition, will comprise a display of publiclyavailable databases from around the world providing financial, business, educational, news, management, marketing, legal and medical information online. The second, a full Conference programme, including product reviews, will run concurrently with the Exhibition. This will enable the business or professional person to find out how online information improves business productivity, and how to select the appropriate online information systems to suit their particular needs.