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Not, you will note, The Death of the Book, The Demise of the Novel, or The End of Western Civilisation As We Know It, or any of the other apocalyptic forecasts that have accompanied the onset of the Digital Revolution. I simply want to say that while all of those other forecasts may (or may not) be true, the central change that this new industrial revolution will bring is a radical alteration in the relationship between the Reader and the Word. If we define the business of reading as the ability to absorb argument or narrative developed serially through the interlinking of sentences, paragraphs and pages of text clothed in the authority of being gathered together in a single binding called a book, then this form of reading will become an arcane pursuit (addicts will doubtless form private clubs to pursue the hobby by 2050: ScreenRead will have arrived).

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.

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.

The year 1986 was marked by more active indications of concern for information industry development policy (as distinct from information technology policy) in Whitehall and Luxembourg than almost any preceding year in the 1980s. UK initiatives launched during the year displayed to a fragmented market a real concern with the ‘I’ in IT, as the policy recommendations of the 1983 ITAP report began at length to be deployed in the marketplace. Meanwhile, the new DGXIII, straddled between Luxembourg and Brussels, sought to re‐orientate its new workplan to new leadership, with initial indications of its eventual direction emerging in the Commissions' Electronic Publishing Conference and SOAG (Senior Officials Advisory Group), meetings both in November.

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.

Reviews recent interlending and document supply literature. Considers the implications of open accesss archiving and the ongoing developments in consortia and electronic journals. A number of other issues are reviewed briefly.

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.

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.

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.

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.