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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03074809710159358. When citing the article, please cite: Robin Murray, Ian Pettman, (1997), “The UNIverse project”, New Library World, Vol. 98 Iss: 2, pp. 53 - 59.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03074809910273250. When citing the article, please cite: Robin Murray, Neil Smith, Ian Pettman, (1999), “The UNIverse Project: a review of progress up to the demonstration phase”, New Library World, Vol. 100 Iss: 4, pp. 153 - 163.

This is a most important study of an essentially modern situation. The first part, “Getting in Print”, introduces the way short‐run publications can be produced without sacrificing quality or being priced out of the market. There has been considerable polarisation in the publishing trade as huge multinational combines have continued to take over smaller units and now dominate the publishing, marketing and distribution of English language titles worldwide. This could well have made it difficult indeed for authors of low‐volume, less profitably saleable works to find a publisher. Paradoxically, however, helped by computer technology it has opened up the field for enterprising new small‐scale publishers, with an eye for scholarly specialist subjects and new authors, to issue short‐run editions and even to achieve a better return on capital and higher profit ratios than do the major publishers. The total number of titles produced has actually grown, causing bibliographical problems for librarians who need to keep track of publication, and greatly increasing the number of works going out of print before they can be acquired. The reprint trade is similarly in confusion because the economics of reprinting have become more chancy for some works and potentially easier for others.

Reviews the progress of the UNIverse Project, a large‐scale open distributed libraries demonstration project supported by the European Commission’s Telematics for Libraries Programme. Concentrates on the technical achievements of the first two phases of the contract and indicates some technical problems encountered. Describes the development of the special interest groups and the plans for the final stage (the demonstration and evaluation phase) including progress to January 1999. Outlines the work remaining in the demonstration phase including the evaluation and proposed exploitation plans as well as a new task focussing on business and economic issues.

Staff training is an important function in many libraries because it can increase staff competence, effectiveness and morale. For a variety of reasons, including government encouragement, desire to maximise the use of staff resources, and to enable coverage of areas of expertise not available in all libraries, some groups of librarians have found it profitable to undertake training co‐operatively. A number of schemes were set up in the 1970s. As with many co‐operative ventures, there have been successes and disappointments but it has nevertheless been possible to attain a better general standard of training at less cost per trainee.

The Centre has recently changed its policy on student access.

Microcomputers are now vital tools in many libraries and information centres and they are used not only to facilitate administrative and clerical operations but also as a means of accessing information in many different formats. Yet the need for proper management, control and maintenance of these machines has not received the attention it deserves except by way of passing references in the literature on the use of microcomputers in libraries. Elizabeth Lane has attempted to fill the gap with a comprehensive manual. On the management side it covers the planning process, assessment of needs and system requirements, evaluation and cost/benefit analysis, purchase and installation, orientation and training, and record keeping. On the maintenance side the subject is divided into preventive maintenance, responsive maintenance, and costs.

September was a busy month for IIS. Brian Lang, Chief Executive of the British Library, was inaugurated as the Institute's new president. Martin White, the retiring president, gave his 1992/93 presidential address entitled “Networks and Networking — Making the Right Connections”. Professor Charles Oppenheim of the University of Strathclyde gave the seventh IIS/ISI lecture “Do Citations Matter?” in which he reviewed the history of citation analysis and the significance of recent studies of the acknowledgements given in papers and how they fit into citation counts. He concluded by saying that yes, citations do matter, but we must be careful in how we use them.

Of all possible uses of computers in information handling the most controversial lie in the fields of artificial intelligence and expert systems. Incidentally, these fields are the most irritating to those people who cringe when computers are spoken of as is they possessed human attributes. They are also those areas which have absorbed most resources with comparatively little to show for it and yet are the most fascinating and potentially the most promising. They pose numerous unanswered questions and many daunting challenges, but they have brought some notable achievements, so librarians and information workers must accept the necessity to learn about, understand, and be capable of using and evaluating expert systems. Even in some cases they should be able to carry out modest development. But how do they achieve this desirable state of affairs? It is not often I go overboard when reviewing a book but I do so now because here is the answer to that question, the very book I, and I am sure many others, have been waiting for!

Feona Hamilton, formerly the Library Association's Press Officer and later for a time Information, Research and Consultancy Group Manager at Aslib, offers her experience in public relations in the library world to librarians and information professionals wishing to publicise or market their services. She adopts the definitions that publicity consists of promoting something in order to draw attention to it, whereas marketing consists of promoting something in order to sell it. It has long been known that the public image of librarians is unacceptably low and that libraries fail to attract the attention they deserve, even within the organisation or authority that supports them. Everyone suffers in consequence yet surprisingly little is done to counter this belief of inferiority. There are articles and some other books, mostly of US origin, on this topic, but nothing exactly like Infopromotion.