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An organization's value structure is measured in terms of assets or lack of assets. Assets are items that have an exchange value. In a more strict accounting sense, assets are the resources of a person or business. Common types of assets are cash, equipment, real estate property, inventory, and good will. In the service industry employees are often described as assets to their company because their skills and personal contacts produce value for the firm. Information is considered an asset by organizations ranging from CBS or NBC to the Central Intelligence Agency. For many companies information is an asset, a type of raw material that contributes to the product development process. Information, of course, also may be that company's product. The concept of assets can provide a valuable way of viewing the management of a library.

Proctor & Gamble is having difficulties. In July the 156 year old consumer products giant announced that it would be closing 30 of its 147 manufacturing facilities over the next three years and eliminating 13,000 jobs. One of the reasons for this massive downsizing, as described in the July 26, 1993, issue of Newsweek, is Proctor & Gamble's “proclivity for hanging on to outdated brands.” Coincidentally, in the same issue, Newsweek reported that Apple CEO John Sculley was forced to relinquish his position because the company posted a 1993 third quarter loss of $188 million. The loss and the soft market will force Apple to lay off 16 percent of its 13,000 employees. Some reasons for Apple's problems: soft sales of its primary products and increased competition from Microsoft's Windows. Both Apple and Proctor & Gamble temporarily neglected a traditional factor of marketing: products have life cycles that must be monitored if those products are to produce the required profits and return on investment.

The American library community is discovering small businesses and economic development. Individual librarians and libraries, of course, have provided effective information services to the business community for many years. Library service to businesses influenced John Cotton Dana to found the Special Libraries Association. Large urban library systems established “mercantile” libraries during the early years of their development. Within the past decade, however, the library community's service to the business and economic development sector has increased significantly. The reasons for this surge in service are simple. Service has been increased because of accountability, competition, opportunity, and evolution. It will be helpful to discuss each of these areas before presenting ten steps state library agencies can take to foster small business development and economic development because factors in each area need to be considered in order to establish a conceptual background for the recommendations.

In the Northeast, taxpayers are looking toward a winter that threatens deeper cuts into their pocketbooks. An economy that was supposed to continue its growth has turned flat. The real estate market is in tatters, just as S&L bailouts and the eternal U.S. budget deficit drive a wedge into the President's vow of no new taxes at the federal level. And a larger percentage of the citizenry relies on fixed incomes that make a mockery of the golden years. These are all long‐term problems with no quick‐fix solutions. The portents of a dismal decade for tax supported institutions are all around us.

Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.