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Being able to show a benefit for information services to balance against their cost, and knowing what criteria to use for choice among the options for their provision—these are needs which loom large for information people. This paper reviews what techniques have been found useful, and tries to show how valuations from the clients of information services can be brought into the equation.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH, WHITEHALL, S.W. 28th August, 1922. Sir, I am directed by the Minister of Health to draw the attention of the Council to the Milk and Dairies (Amendment) Act, 1922, the provisions of which, except section 3, will come into operation on the 1st September, 1922.

Reviews the literature on quality. Defines quality in management terms, gives examples of the advantages of quality appraisal, and describes how its assessment has been attempted by self‐evaluation, surveys of user satisfaction, and failure analysis. Discusses examples of how quality appraisal schemes have been set up from scratch, and of approaches to quality standards setting. Gives, for four aspects of library service, a detailed analysis of quality criteria and standards and methods used in appraisal: enquiry answering, document provision, computerized reference retrieval, and current awareness service.

Now that so many current awareness services are available from outside the industrial special library, and internal SDI via computer is a reality in many companies, it seems likely that attitudes to the use of the ‘information bulletin’ concept as a means of dissemination will have changed. To get some idea of the trend, facts and opinions were solicited from librarians and information officers.

One result of being a ‘small’ librarian has been that, although hired to provide a current awareness service and write reviews for a research staff, I must spend a proportion of my time in arranging for the buying, cataloguing, lending, borrowing and binding of books and other material. However, I do not see these two sorts of activity as separate in any way, but as both containing elements of two fundamentally different approaches to human effort, which I shall call the professional and the clerical. If I was entirely on my own, my professional hat would be worn when deciding what book to buy, what words to use as indexing labels, what ideas in a paper were relevant, what advantages a newly available reproduction process would have over the system in use in my library. My clerical hat would get an airing when I passed on a request for a book purchase, typed and filed the index cards, or arranged for a record of a loan to be made.

Education News is one of several information bulletins produced by the library at Trent Polytechnic. It contains references to articles in newspapers and journals on topics of interest in further education, higher education, and adult education. DES (Department of Education and Science) press releases are also included. About fifty copies of the bulletin are produced fortnightly. It is intended as a current awareness service for senior people in the Polytechnic administration and the departments, but it goes to people outside the Polytechnic as well, and half the recipients are librarians or information officers involved in some way with education.

This paper is an attempt to give the picture of a somewhat different approach from that at Harwell. Descriptions of the systems and the data bases being used at Aldermaston have already been recorded in some detail, especially by L. Corbett, and so will not be repeated here. I would on the other hand like to say something about the policy behind the decision to use external data bases, to include some more up‐to‐date assessments of the use being made of these services and their present costs, and finally some plans for future developments.

The production of a keyword in context (KWIC) index by H. Luhn of IBM was a great step forward in the technique of automatic information handling. Although Luhn proposed the KWIC Index as a means of alerting recipients to current material, it has been widely used ever since to produce indexes for retrospective search purposes as well.

The users of information services should be enabled to fully exploit current awareness services (CAS) on the Internet to their own benefit and also that of the larger organisation. Services available via the Internet have added to the importance of current awareness, the meaning of the concept of CAS and the purposes served by CAS. Empowerment requires commitment by both parties (information services and their users), a supportive environment, a clear idea of the outcomes to be achieved, and a new attitude to the training methods and opportunities to employ. The planning of CAS empowerment programmes within the familiar constraints on information services is considered. Aspects users should know about Internet CAS are identified, the role of the information specialist is considered and a few suggestions are made about the implementation of empowerment programmes. This article is based on a paper read at the Fifth Southern African Online Meeting, held on 9 June 1999, in Midrand, South Africa.