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This paper will highlight the legal aspects of information security and copyright laws, as well as global networking, remote access, single sign‐on and Internet security in an international environment.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward an argument for the importance of social and situational dynamics present when groups of organizational members view images. This both enriches psychoanalytic theories of the visual previously brought to bear on this topic and adds a valuable psychoanalytical perspective to visual organization studies.

The paper extends Burkard Sievers’ concept of the “social photo matrix” (SPM) through an interdisciplinary review of literature in psychoanalysis, audiencing, media studies and social theory.

A socially nuanced variant of the SPM is put forward as a way to explore organizational members’ experiences of work and employment, as part of a nascent “visual methodological approach” to studying organization(s).

The ideas within this conceptual paper would benefit from empirical investigation. This would be a fruitful and interesting possibility for future research.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the contemporary utility of the SPM as a psychoanalytically‐motivated method through which to understand visually‐mediated effects of organizational action, as collectively experienced by their members and stakeholders.

The paper makes a particular contribution to the poorly‐researched area of the collective reception of organizational images and opens up possibilities to work with the hidden anxieties and defences that arise in the course of organizational action.

The serials pricing crisis—and its underlying causes—is now being recognized. The alarm was sounded several years ago when librarians discovered that some British publishers were adding hefty differential subscription charges to their North American customers. Almost immediately serials librarians at a few libraries began to analyze the problem. The libraries at the Universities of Michigan and Louisiana State constructed databases from which valuable information could be gleaned. This information was used to explain the full dimensions and implications of a problem that was already well on the way to becoming a full‐blown crisis.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

In the last column, I reviewed some recent nonfiction works on the dilemma of the housewife. The fictional housewife has, I feel, as much to tell us—especially about the coping mechanisms of modern women.

This update concerns various recent developments which make it much more affordable and easier than before to access digital audio and video. Typically all that you require are a standard modem, an Internet connection and low‐cost or even free‐of‐charge software.

THE re‐organisation of local government in Greater London and the resultant amalgamation of library authorities is viewed by many with considerable misgivings. The upheaval of staff, the loss of status for some senior officers, the general uncertainty for the future—these are very real consequences of the Act and they cannot be ignored. Many chief librarians will see the work of a lifetime, perhaps spent in building up a comprehensive and unified system, made virtually meaningless overnight.