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The evolution of the concept of an Adaptive Network Library Interface is described and several technical and research issues are explored. The Adaptive Network Library Interface (ANLI) is a computer program that stands as a buffer between users of the library catalog and the catalog itself. This buffer unit maintains its own network of pointers from book to book, which it elicits from the users, interactively. It is hoped that such a buffer increases the value of the catalog for the users and provides librarians with new and useful information about the books in the collection. The relation to concepts such as hypertext and neural networks is explored as well.

Although library costs continue to rise in respect to staff, materials, and general operating expenses, the budgets needed to maintain the expected level of services are not keeping pace. And, in spite of a surge in interest in computing unit costs for budget justification, resource distribution, cost comparison, and forecasting, relatively few organizations have implemented full‐scale cost analyses.

Library accounts in the university financial accounting system should give administrators information for sound management decision. In light of the extensive body of literature published recently on library accounting and cost analysis, 12 university libraries were reviewed to determine whether their accounting practices were keeping up theory.

This paper reports findings from the first annual cycle of a three‐year research project on the provision and use of electronic information systems (EIS) within higher education in the UK. The project, JISC User Surveys: Trends in Electronic Information Services (JUSTEIS), was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and undertaken at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA). Students, academics and library staff in 25 universities were surveyed using critical incident and critical success factors methodologies to ascertain the range and nature of EIS use. Provision of these systems by higher education institutions was also investigated via an analysis of their library websites. The findings reported in this paper focus on student use and the purposes for which EIS are employed, and reveal the limited array of EIS used and the ad hoc nature of search strategies adopted across undergraduate and postgraduate bodies within a range of disciplines. There appears to be little or no variation in the pattern of EIS use by the various student groups studied – the effect of the Internet on information seeking by students is hugely significant and the more formal resources, such as JISC‐negotiated resources are little used. There is little evidence of coherent search strategies used by students. Recommendations for both the JISC and higher education are offered.

The Thirteenth Online Meeting was held in New York on 5–7 May 1992. Here, Online Review's Managing Editor, Simon Atkinson, offers the second of two sets of abstracts of selected papers. The first set appeared in the June issue of Online Review (page 165).

American sex education is continually under fire due to conflicting morals surrounding hegemonic sociocultural norms. These programs, and ultimately the students, are often victims of information inequities which leverage adult control over minors to prevent access to sexual health information. Withholding salient sexual health information infringes on intertwined tenets of human rights, such as education and information access. Spurred by recent disputes and barriers to updating unethical curricula in the states of Arizona and Texas, this chapter uses a human rights lens to explore the current information inequities in K-12 sexual education and students’ precarious positions in policy spaces. This framework demonstrates how libraries are uniquely protected spaces for intellectual freedom and the roles librarians can and should play as sexual health information providers in order to help students overcome information inequities. This chapter will provide recommendations for librarians and other educators to inform and organize advocacy as well as leverage current library operations to support adolescents’ sexual health literacy.

Librarians are becoming more accustomed to using output and performance measures to assess library services. However, in an era of limited funds and increasing accountability, we also need to turn our attention to analyzing library productivity in terms of staff performance and dollars expended. We can benefit from sharing that information with other librarians in order to provide a basis for interpreting our findings. Useful data on productivity can be derived from current, published library statistics.

This paper considers the relevance which networks have for research at the Marketing/Entrepreneurship Interface. The paper argues that while there is some evidence to suggest that networks are an important tool for entrepreneurial firms, there is a need to more clearly explain what is meant by the terms “network” and “networking”. It is proposed that by using a definition of networks borrowed from the field of social anthropology, current understanding of the marketing benefits that can accrue to firms which make entrepreneurial use of networks can be advanced. Drawing upon the findings of research which employed such a definition, the paper concludes that networks and the activity of networking are indeed important entrepreneurial marketing tools and that further research attention to these is required to acquire a comprehensive understanding of these.