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My aim in this paper is to try to engage you in a critical evaluation of some present practice in ‘library user education’. The discussion is in three parts:

For a field approaching a critical period of reappraisal and rethinking of methods, user education is well served by secondary material. A definitive history of training in the use of the library by Bonn in 1960 has been followed by a steady flow of review articles on the subject. Tidmarsh in 1968 concentrated on instruction in the use of academic libraries. After briefly tracing the historical background in Britain and America she went on to describe developments in Britain in theory and practice following the proposals of the Library Association University and Research Section in 1949 for a three‐stage user education programme. She concluded her review with a discussion of the three main problems that were then, and to a certain extent still are, hampering the spread of user education—inadequate finance, lack of timetabled time, and indifference of academic staff. Mews reviewing developments in teaching the use of books and libraries, again with reference to British academic libraries for the period 1966–70, examined courses reported during that period paying particular attention to instruction for new students and undergraduates. Trends she noted included a move to the use of audio‐visual aids and to the appointment of information officers, bringing new opportunities for person‐to‐person enquiries. Surveying current practice in 1970 Pugh noted many difficulties faced by library instruction programmes at the time. These problems were taken up by Scrivener in a significant article describing instruction in library use as a persisting problem. ‘The welter of writing shows clearly the extent of interest in the subject and equally clearly that it is a problem (or complex of problems) to which no generally accepted solutions have been found.’ In America the approaches to teaching library skills to college students have been studied by Dudley, a study which included descriptions of two accredited courses at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California. More recently Givens after discussing the history of the role of the library in user education studied the educational developments of the ‘sixties and the libraries’ response. He discussed the componsnets of a user education programme and the rethinking and reorganization that would be required to achieve that programme.

The brief given for this paper is that it should be a personal view about what is good or bad in my experience in information service provision, the quality and value of various services. I have taken these to be secondary services as they are normally understood. This has left me with a two‐fold problem. Firstly I have little constructive to say about such services, good or bad, which has not already been said far better elsewhere and secondly, though technically the customer for these services, I am not the end user of the information provided.

Attempts to predict the changes which will occur at Bradford University Library by the year 2000. Suggests that changes will be more of an evolution than a revolution. Discusses the services provided, finances, staff skills, stock and space in terms of the present and possible future.

THE ORGANISING COMMITTEE of the British Library was set up in June 1971 following the acceptance in April 1970 by the government of the recommendations of the Dainton Report on the national libraries and the consequent White Paper (Cmnd 4572) in January 1971. The committee is to plan the organisation of the library and develop and co‐ordinate its policy, and is clearly of the greatest importance, not only to the national libraries but to all libraries through the bibliographic and research services the British Library will undertake. What do we know of the work of this committee, which has now been in existence for a year?

The following is an annotated bibliography of materials published in 1977 on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources. A few entries have a 1976 publication date and are included because information about them was not available in time for the 1976 review. Also some entries are not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the information.

Discusses the changes likely to take place in the information professional’s role in the new millennium. Proposes that the skills of the information professional will be highly sought after as a range of new hybrid jobs develop. Warns that information professionals should be flexible and should be updating their knowledge and skills continually to take advantage of the changes.

THE London & Home Counties Branch of the Library Association is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, and fortuitously the jubilee falls on the same day of the week as the branch's foundation—Tuesday, May 1. The branch is holding a buffet reception at Buckingham Palace Road Library that evening, to which all present and former members are cordially invited and which will be attended by LA President K C Harrison, himself a former chairman of the branch.

We have conducted a study of academic faculty use of databases for research, their need for evaluative guides to databases, and the appropriateness of currently‐available guides. Although the response rate was low (19%), the follow‐up survey suggested only a minimal non‐response bias. Our findings suggest that academic faculty are typically unaware of the range of databases available and few recognize the need for databases in research. Of those faculty who do use databases, most delegate the searching to a librarian or an assistant, rather than performing the searches themselves. We identified thirty‐nine database guides; these tend to be descriptive rather than evaluative.

The following is an annotated bibliography of materials published in 1978 on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources. A few entries have a 1977 publication date and are included because information about them was not available in time for the 1977 review. Also some entries are not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the information.