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Who would have imagined, half a dozen years ago, that the national libraries of Europe would be cooperating as closely as they are on access to electronic publications? Who could have guessed that remote villages in northern Greece would be making use of mainstream information services thanks to state‐of‐the‐art facilities installed in mobile library buses? And who would have believed that real‐time ISDN connections to sound archives in Britain, Denmark, and Italy would be providing users with top‐quality access to music and other interesting sound bites?

International New copyright provisions for digital transmission. Two new treaties relating to copyright in digital transmissions have been agreed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation's (WIPO) Diplomatic Conference. WIPO is a UN agency with a membership of 159 states.

Many libraries are using the Internet's World Wide Web to provide information/or library clients and others. The article begins with a brief discussion of the situation in one country, Iceland, based on a November 1995 questionnaire survey. Among other things, this Icelandic survey looked at library use of the Internet and the ways in which libraries are using the World Wide Web to provide information via a homepage. A larger Nordic study, of which this Icelandic study was part, sets the Icelandic findings in a broader context. To take this further into an international setting content analyses were carried out of the home pages of public libraries and school libraries in 13 different countries. After a short description of the methodology, the results of these analyses are presented Based on this, there is a discussion of the purposes for which a library might create a home page on the World Wide Web and of the information that might be provided through the homepage, depending on the purpose or aim. The final section of the paper deals with issues and problems associated with the creation and maintenance of a library home page.

Centrifugal compressors are integral components in oil industry, thus effective maintenance is required. Condition-based maintenance and prognostics and health management (CBM/PHM) have been gaining popularity. CBM/PHM can also be performed remotely leading to e-maintenance. Its success depends on the quality of the data used for analysis and decision making. A major issue associated with it is the missing data. Their presence may compromise the information within a set, causing bias or misleading results. Addressing this matter is crucial. The purpose of this paper is to review and compare the most widely used imputation techniques in a case study using condition monitoring measurements from an operational industrial centrifugal compressor.

Brief overview and comparison of most widely used imputation techniques using a complete set with artificial missing values. They were tested regarding the effects of the amount, the location within the set and the variable containing the missing values.

Univariate and multivariate imputation techniques were compared, with the latter offering the smallest error levels. They seemed unaffected by the amount or location of the missing data although they were affected by the variable containing them.

During the analysis, it was assumed that at any time only one variable contained missing data. Further research is still required to address this point.

This study can serve as a guide for selecting the appropriate imputation method for missing values in centrifugal compressor condition monitoring data.

THE training model to be discussed is based on an integrated set of manual and mechanised indexing systems, all handling the same body of information from a limited subject field. By extending the scope of the model's operations to include prior and subsequent activities like the selection and abstracting of the documents to be indexed, and the preparation and dissemination of material through the use of the indexes, the model may be used for a wide range of documentation training, principally at three levels: demonstration by the lecturer to the students; use by the students in the retrieval and dissemination of information; and development by the students through the selection and abstracting of documents, the indexing and storage of information and ultimately the use of feedback from the dissemination stage to improve the systems.

Records management has undergone an unprecedented process of change in the last few years. This has been chiefly due to the proliferation of information technology and the rapid pace of organisational change. It is my belief that current criticisms of the retention schedule as a records management tool are largely justified because the traditional retention schedule programme has failed to keep pace with these changes. This paper proposes that the full potential of the retention schedule has not been recognised in many organisations. It argues that if it is possible to identify overall retention requirements at a series level it should also be possible to identify other properties and descriptive values that can also be assigned to each series in advance of records creation It then discusses the range of such properties that it is possible to define at this point and begins to explore how, if automated, these values can act not only as the basis of future systems design, but can also be used as the point of control for virtually all records management functions.

Reports on the exhibits and exhibitors at Manufacturing Week, which took place at the NEC, 10‐12 November 1998. It reveals that machine vision is the major attraction at the show with over a quarter of the exhibitors exhibiting activity in this area. A number of the companies who offer turnkey systems are highlighted; some include vision as an element in their systems while others are totally dedicated to application of the technology. The emphasis in the article is on applications with the predominance being for inspection. Brief case studies are given of inspecting automotive switches, a contact lens line, robot grinding of propellers and a seat belt retractor assembly system. Some new products are also described including a “control free” junction for Bosch twin belt pallet conveyors and compact fast camera with integral image acquisition and processing electronics.