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Reports on new technological developments in the information transfer chain and evaluates their likely impact on availability of and access to documents. Demonstrates that new technology is making an impact on traditional means of matching authors′ products with market demands. Examines the impact of compact media on publishing formats; the use of optical discs; and the role of electronic document delivery. Considers the risk that advances in technology will restrict rather than improve availability.

The problems surrounding music interlending formed a major part of the research for a library and information plan for music recently undertaken in the UK. Outlines the difficulties encountered in music provision, including bibliographic inadequacies, lack of standards and expertise, and divergent policies and practices for the supply of both single scores and performance sets. Suggestions for improvement are put forward. Advocates the need for further research and for a national strategy based on co‐operation, and reports significant advances.

Any system of making scientific and technical articles available must meet a reasonable number of the requirements of the main players in the system: authors, publishers, libraries and consumers. Among the requirements are high visibility (authors), profit (publishers) and affordable costs (libraries). Consumers need inter alia exposure, ready access and ease and flexibility of use. They have most requirements but least power. Needs differ for current and older journals. Of the various single modes of publication none performs very well for all parties. Combinations of modes are more effective but payment has to be made twice. Much depends on authors' willingness to accept less visible forms of publication, but the ultimate deciding factor is publishers' assessment of the economics.

Surveys efforts towards co‐operation in interlending within countries including Hungary, Italy, Nigeria, Ghana, Germany and Latvia. Discusses barriers to European interlending and a formula for the size of the European interlending market is given. Interlending protocol and advances in facsimile transmission are described. A methodology of estimating interlending costs, DOCMATCH II, is introduced.

In recent years the UNIMARC format has come to be more widely used as a method of facilitating the international exchange of bibliographic data. This is due, in part, to a number of projects funded by the European Union as part of the Libraries Programme. This paper provides an overview of the state of such projects as reported to a workshop on the UNIMARC format held in Luxembourg in September 1996. Projects briefly described in this overview include: UseMARCON, CoBRA UNIMARC, CoBRA AUTHOR, ONE, CHASE, DELICAT and BIBLINK. Other initiatives related to UNIMARC by IFLA and OCLC are also described. The paper concludes with the main conclusions arising from the workshop addressing the areas of formats, authority control, character sets and electronic publications.

As a preliminary part of the feasibility study of UseMARCON this paper introduces the history of MARC formats, identifying subsets or families among them, and provides information about their current application by different national bibliographic agencies, networks and library systems, especially in Europe. The application of MARC formats is reviewed either as internal/cataloguing formats or as exchange formats available in tape services. Special attention is paid to the actual use and trends of UNIMARC, since UNIMARC itself represents a new stage in the evolution of MARC formats, devised to improve and facilitate the exchange of bibliographic information between different systems.

Following a brief history of cataloguing and the MARC format this paper describes current challenges in developing suitable international formats and cataloguing rules for dealing with electronic resources. Extensive references to the past and current literature provide an overview of the problems faced.