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The automatic recording and exchange of serials data will become increasingly simplified as more subscription agents, library system suppliers, libraries and publishers make use of encrypted data embodied in barcodes appearing on journal issues. This article outlines the standards and data encryption and indicates some of the uses for the data.

Reference‐linking has added a new dimension of value to works containing citations. It drastically reduces the labor involved in accessing referenced material by capitalizing on the ability of electronic items to point to each other. With the promise come a variety of issues that must be addressed before the full benefit can be realized. At the forefront of these are determining what to link to, determining appropriate copy, managing access and copyrights, and persistence of object identifiers. A number of initiatives are tackling these issues to various extents, and a number of publishers and vendors are enabling these technologies. Background, benefits, issues, projects, and employment of reference‐linking are examined to provide an overview of the current state of reference‐linking. A sampling of industry players is queried to obtain a variety of perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to define different types of aggregators and discuss their importance for libraries in the digital era.

A review of literature on aggregators was carried out. The paper focuses mainly on the various aggregators and outlines their advantages and disadvantages for libraries.

Libraries have been working with publishers and aggregators for many years; however, the issues related to aggregators are not well documented. Aggregators have been helping libraries to facilitate their services to users but they have some disadvantages for libraries such as the lack of library influence in selecting individual titles; the lack of control over the contents of aggregator packages; and the confusion of library users when accessing different packages.

The paper provides a useful overview to researchers in any field, enabling them to achieve quickly a clear picture of aggregators in the electronic environment.

John took over editorship in 1992 at a time of major change for VINE. The decision to devote each issue to a particular theme as well as to include more European experiences required the editor to become an instant expert in the current topic, develop contacts across Europe, while still finding time to evaluate new systems hitting the market and keep up to date with the daytime soaps. His eight issues were characterised by a refreshing irreverent style and more than one reader has since asked “whatever happened to that Geordie bloke?” You are about to find out…

This year Book Data reaches its third birthday. The past twelve months have seen steady growth in publisher support and in consolidating our position as a supplier of information services to the home and export book trade. The year ahead will see a series of new product launches in a variety of media.

Mergers are important and challenging elements in hospital reforms. The authors study the social aspects of management and the roles of middle managers in the aftermath of a hospital merger. Especially, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how professional staff and middle managers perceive their relationships with top managers several years after the merger.

A survey was conducted among the professional staff in two merging hospitals’ units six years after a merger. Based on the main findings from this survey, a follow-up interview study was done with a group of middle managers.

The management practices were diagnostic with few interactive or communicative activities. The respondents expressed that mistrust developed between the staff and the top management, and a lack of involvement and interaction lead to decoupled and parallel organizations. Social controls, based on shared norms, had not been developed to create mutual commitment and engagement.

Policy makers should be aware of the need in profound change processes not only to change the tangible elements, but to take care of changing the less tangible elements such as norms and values. Professionals in hospitals are in powerful positions, and changes in such organizations are dependent on trust-building, bottom-up initiatives and evolutionary pathways.

The paper addresses the need to understand the dynamics of the social aspect in managing hospitals as knowledge-intensive organizations when comprehensive restructuring processes are taking place over several years.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the budget, when split into a network of projects, can act as a management tool to balance control with creativity.

A case study is used to discuss the budget in a large Norwegian festival. Simons’ (1995) concept of interactive use of budgets is applied for the analysis of empirical findings. Especially, the authors focus on the design and use of the budget and how it is aligned with the specific characteristics of festivals as economic organizations.

The findings support earlier research which focusses on the need to balance between control and dynamic changes to successfully manage festivals. This study gives a detailed knowledge on how managers use budgets to combine management control with creativity and dynamic adaptions.

This study contributes to a detailed understanding of how managers can use budgets as tools to stabilize between uncertainty, creativity and control.

The hospital sector in Norway has been continuously reorganized since 2002 and the reforms have created organizations that are functionally/vertically controlled, whereas the production lines are coordinated on a process or a lateral basis. The purpose of this paper is to focus on both the perceived functional vertical control and horizontal controls within and between the local hospitals and the regional administrative levels.

A national survey study, complemented with interviews of some key informants and document studies.

The study shows that the functional and vertical lines of management control are perceived to be operating according to the traditional views of management control. The study indicates that the horizontal tasks are not very well implemented, and we did not find interactive and lateral uses of management control systems for managerial purposes.

New control problems arise when services are to be coordinated between autonomous units.

The paper focuses on the control problems found within the horizontal, flat relationship between production units in hospitals; new organizational structures have emerged where lateral relations are important, but traditional control practices follow functional, vertical lines.