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In an earlier article we surveyed the convergence and integration of major players in the information industry. The trend towards vertical integration, which can be observed in the macromarket, is also evident in the operations of individual online hosts — the micromarket. In this article we look at the vending of online business data, a sector in which commercial bias is strong and where market patterns mimic those of the larger theatre.

The trend towards massification and consolidation in electronic publishing was observed by Schiller in 1980, and is confirmed in the base maps drawn by McLaughlin for the Harvard Program in Information Policy Research. Schiller found the already apparent massification of the communications industry worrying, as links between the US government and the two major players, IBM and AT & T, were strong and likely to increase.

During the First World War, the Creel Committee, set up by President Woodrow Wilson, used the powerful weapon of advertising to disseminate information and shape public opinion. Creel promised Wilson ‘a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventure in advertising’. This campaign, with memorable adverts such as Courtauld Smiths' Red Cross poster, ‘The Greatest Mother in the World’, and James Montgomery Flagg's self‐portrait of Uncle Sam declaring ‘I want YOU for the US Army’, was a great success for advertising technique and enhanced the status of the tyro profession. It also showed how effective advertising could be in persuading and swaying mass opinion. A ‘Printer's Ink’ editorial of 1917 clearly shows that the relationship between advertising and control has been, perhaps for the first time, fully exploited, and fully appreciated:

Recent shifts in the corporate configuration of the information industry are part of a spate of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures in the last five years of business history. The turbulence is due, according to some analysts, to the opening of the regulatory floodgates by the current US administration. But the phenomenon is transnational, and, arguably, is as much due to the strategic fall‐out of multinational enterprise in a turbulent global climate. Libertarian rhetoric may colour the interpretation of events, but it does not totally shape them.

Since its origins during the Second World War, the computer industry has grown more rapidly than any other technology in history, and this growth has spawned a wealth of new terms and manners‐of‐speaking to describe computers and the uses to which they can be put. Such terms are often referred to collectively as computerese. The thesis of Barry's entertaining book is that the use of computerese is increasingly being extended to a wealth of other subjects that are often totally unrelated to computing. Barry refers to this use (or abuse) of language as technobabble: the subject matter and the pleasingly tongue‐in‐cheek style can be judged from the introduction, which starts as follows: ‘This paper‐based, productized bookware module is designed to support the robust implementation of a friendly, context‐driven interface between the developer and the end‐user. Did you understand this sentence? If so, you are fluent in technobabble’.

Special libraries are undergoing some fundamental changes which require redefinition of the competencies of information professionals. The contextual variables necessitate identification of competencies in relation to the peculiarities of a situation. Some methodological improvements were also attempted to arrive at a reliable body of knowledge and skill competencies. Fifty top and middle managers of the ten largest special libraries in Malaysia were interviewed to validate competencies by using a scale indicative of the perceived extent of importance of each competency. The validated competencies have been presented in the following six areas: foundation, cataloguing, circulation, information service, collection development and serial control. Capabilities to relate information facility to the organizational mission and profile, managerial competence, effective exploitation of information technology, subject expertise, and a great deal of emphasis on service aspect figure as the most important arsenal for the future information professionals.

Access is an unusually well planned and executed communications package that has virtually all the features anyone could want, now and for the foreseeable future. It is easily as powerful as any other communications package on the market today, and it has enough special features to satisfy a diverse group of users.

The first Oslo Online, a new annual event for the Norwegian online community took place from 16–27 February 1987 at the SAS Scandinavia Hotel in the centre of Oslo.

In the spring of 1982, I published an article in Reference Services Review on marketing libraries and information services. The article covered available literature on that topic from 1970 through part of 1981, the time period immediately following Kotler and Levy's significant and frequently cited article in the January 1969 issue of the Journal of Marketing, which was first to suggest the idea of marketing nonprofit organizations. The article published here is intended to update the earlier work in RSR and will cover the literature of marketing public, academic, special, and school libraries from 1982 to the present.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the use of small river ferries as an under-researched but novel mode of travel which enhances and brings new dimensions to tourist experiences of travelling landscapes.

The study used a mixed methods approach including participant observation, a survey and interviews with ferry users and staff at one river crossing in South West England.

The ferry attracts tourists as a different and practical mode of transport. The river crossing provides an experience of being on water, and the material structure of the ferry significantly shapes on-board interactions whilst providing new perspectives of place.

This article draws on data collected for a study of ferry crossings conducted at three sites in Devon and Cornwall, England, using multiple methods. The material presented in this article focuses on one site and draws on four interviews, twelve reflection cards and observations.

The research highlighted the extent to which the ferry is dependent on tourist use. At the same time, it reveals the extent to which the crossing enriches the tourist experience and celebrates a ferry’s contribution to local place-making.

The majority of research on ferry crossings focuses on commuter experiences, marine crossings and larger passenger vessels. This article makes an original contribution to literature on ferries, as it offers a perspective on tourist experiences of river ferry crossings, reveals how the ferry structure influences interrelations on-board and provides distinctive insights into place through a focus on movement across water.