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One of the looming questions for researchers is — how will we be communicating about our research by the end of the century? Forecasting is always a dangerous activity. The rule‐of‐thumb is either to cover a very short period (in which case you can hardly go wrong), or a very long period (in which case everybody will have forgotten the predictions long before their sell‐by date). A period extending into the early years of the next century seems to fall unhappily between these two preferred targets but it actually has one advantage, as I discovered some years ago. At the end of the 1970s I wrote a brief study of how information technology might affect the communication of research during the 1980s. One of the rationales for covering a decade was that typically it takes 5–10 years for a major new development to move from being a minority concern to engaging the interest of a large fraction of the relevant audience. (Television, for example, required some ten years to take off properly in both the USA and the UK.) So a ten‐year span should make it possible to spot some of the winners, though not necessarily how they will be used.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/01435129710166482. When citing the article, please cite: Hazel Woodward, Fytton Rowland, Cliff McKnight, Jack Meadows, Carolyn Pritchett, (1997), “Electronic journals: myths and realities”, Library Management, Vol. 18 Iss: 3, pp. 155 - 162.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/01435129510087013. When citing the article, please cite: Julie Riley, Jack Meadows, (1995), “The role of information in disaster planning: a case study approach”, Library Management, Vol. 16 Iss: 4, pp. 18 - 24.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03074809610127183. When citing the article, please cite: Jagtar Singh, Fytton Rowland, Jack Meadows, (1996), “Electronic journals on library and information science”, New Library World, Vol. 97 Iss: 6, pp. 9 - 13.

This article explores the relationship between scholarly communication, an established research area receiving renewed interest, and digital libraries, a relatively new area of research. Scholarship is inherently a social process and it is embedded in a structure of relationships with other scholars, with scholarly societies, and with publishers and libraries. These stakeholders agree that the relationship has become unbalanced with the advent of electronic publishing, digital libraries, computer networks and associated changes in pricing, intellectual property policies and contracts, but they do not agree on solutions to redress the balance. Several problems worthy of research lie at the intersection of scholarly communication processes and digital libraries. These include the ability of digital libraries to support the cycle of information seeking, using and creating; the ‘social life’ of documents; and electronic publishing. Other interesting problems exist at the intersection of structures of scholarly communication and digital libraries. These include increased interdependency of scholarly documents, as links are embedded between documents, both within and between digital libraries; the indefinite preservation of digital documents; business models for electronic publishing and digital libraries; and conflicts between the physical and virtual aspects of libraries.

Reports on a preliminary study to look at the changes and trends in the scientific information system. Discusses use of E‐mail, fax, electronic journals and newsletters and the comparisons of cost between the various media. Concludes that the overall result of the survey was that a clear majority of those interviewed supported the idea of an in‐depth investigation of the scientific information system in the UK.

Investigates whether public libraries are capable of providing a basic science enquiry service. Examines the range of environmental enquiries handled by five participating libraries as a part of their everyday business. During the study some 110 detailed enquiries where recorded: somewhat less than 20 per cent of these concerned local environmental questions; the rest related to environmental queries at the national or global level. The three most popular topics were: pollution; names/addresses of environmental organizations and people; and recycling. Enquirers were evenly split between school attenders and adults. Most of the enquiries could be answered by making use of the resources already available in the library; no more than 10 per cent had to be referred elsewhere for an answer.

Discusses the transition from printed to electronic journals and presents a number of factors which may deter users from moving to electronic journals. Raises the question of cost from both a user’s and a librarian’s point of view and the question of subsidies. Points out a number of technical problems which may be encountered and suggests that the transition will take considerable time and effort.

No‐one doubts that the changes occurring in Eastern Europe will affect all forms of communication between the East and the West. The theme on which I was asked to speak is electronic communication. But the changes in availability of hard‐copy will be at least as important. I remember being in Warsaw in the early 1970s and spotting a copy of a German book that looked interesting in the Academy of Sciences bookshop. When I tried to buy it, I was referred to the bookshop manager, who explained that, although I was certainly entitled to do so, it was the only copy of the book that had been imported into Poland. We agreed that it was more important for it to go to a Polish library than into my collection. This underlined two points to me. The obvious one was that financial and other restrictions were limiting, in a major way, East European access to R & D information. Secondly, perhaps less obviously, it struck me that centralisation — in this case, of the purchase of books from abroad — could have some advantages. At least the bookshop manager seemed to have a clear grasp of the overall problems of book distribution in Poland. These same two aspects — problems of access and the role of central organisation — also seem to be basic to a discussion of electronic communication between East and West.