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To develop an understanding of communication among agribusiness journals and to examine patterns of citations that allow the measurement and description of the structure of communication flows among those journals in a network.

The data for this study were gathered from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson Scientific (Philadelphia). The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis, based on an international trade analogy to explain the network of agribusiness journals and how these journals communicate with business and economics journals.

Business and economics journals and, particularly the traditionally major ones, surprisingly were scarcely every used. However, the British Food Journal stood out with 50 citations to marketing and strategic management journals.

There are predominantly four such limitations: only 33 journals were studied, only one 5-year time period was involved, that time period is a few years old and the journal characteristics were derived using data from the “Scopes” and “Information for Authors” text on the website of each journal.

Exchanges of agribusiness knowledge and information among diverse stakeholders (consumers, suppliers and public agencies) in a complex environment require a better understanding of the network of agribusiness journals and their relation to traditional business and economics journals.

Networks of journals facilitate cooperation and interactions to improve developments in the field.

Examining citations from and to the field of agribusiness is interesting and important because knowledge is transferred through networks comprise those who contribute to journals, read them and learn from them, i.e. by “talking” to each other as well as by practitioners who also read and learn from those journals.

Every paper needs a theme. Luckily, the venue defines the theme for me; how did the initial conditions at Stanford affect the development and diffusion of population ecology as a theoretical research program. I use the term theoretical research program reluctantly, especially considering the context of the department of sociology at Stanford University during the 1970s and 1980s (Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970). Nonetheless, I believe that population ecology can be usefully described as such. It is not a theory but rather a collection of theories developing over time with progressive problem shifts. There are methodological rules that define what paths of research to pursue and to avoid (Pfeffer, 1993, p. 613).

British librianship was well represented at the International Federation of Library Association and Institutions (IFLA) 58th General Conference held in New Delhi, 30 August to 5 September 1992. With 1,500 delegates from 72 nations, ranging from Namibia and Estonia to the USA and Russia, it was truly a cosmopolitan jamboree held in the glittering, ultramodern Taj Palace International Hotel and Conference Centre.

The arrival of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the public consciousness of librarianship is a relatively new phenomenon, spurred on by rapid change in the information sector, “technological push”, obsolescence of initial professional qualifications and societal changes. Outlines the benefits of CPD and comments on the Library Association′s new initiative in the CPD arena. Examines some basic problems in CPD planning and provision, notably the terminological difficulty embedded in the concept of “professional” in the label “CPD”. Addresses the controversial area of mandatory versus compulsory CPD and the benefits or disadvantages involved, including the important “equal opportunities” dimension.

Taking an historical overview of librarianship in the UK, a consistent and noticeable feature is the slow yet steady evolution of “library worker” into a nearly full‐blown and mature “professional”. The transition from “scholar librarian” in the late Middle Ages (and “monk librarian” before that) through to the Victorian age's earnest, rigorous “curators and improvers of minds” and on to the liberal, democratic expansionist “bookmen” of the early and middle twentieth century has been steady and cumulative. Whether the apotheosis is complete with the arrival, in the late twentieth century, of “information man” (or should it be “information person”?) and the hi‐tech library remains to be seen.