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Efforts to initiate cooperative collection management have evolved from two distinct networking contexts in Illinois. The earliest was the Illinois Library and Information Network (ILLINET), a statewide network that has grown into a multitype resource‐sharing network of libraries of all kinds and sizes. The second network context was the Library Computer System (LCS), which is based at the University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign but includes the holdings of some 30 public and private academic libraries in Illinois. LCS was selected by the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) as the unified database on which to build its program for cooperative collection management in Illinois academic libraries.

In the early 1980s the state of Illinois formed a state‐wide resource sharing consortium under a state network called ILLINET, founded on an OCLC‐based bibliographic database and a consortium of 18 regional library systems. This consortium successfully supported resource sharing among all types of library for nearly 15 years. In the mid‐1990s, financial and technical developments led to the dissolving of the consortium and the realignment of some of its major academic library members with other academic libraries outside the original group. Thus what was once considered a model for the future of multi‐type library consortia became a dysfunctional and non‐operative organisation. This paper examines the financial, political, and technical factors that led to these changes and assesses the short‐ and long‐term impacts on resource sharing for users of the original consortium. Other similar resource sharing consortia models are examined and compared with the Illinois experience. Possible lessons and implications are discussed and possible outcomes listed.

The debate over quality versus demand in public libraries has been argued for some time, largely without resolution. In 1981 Nora Rawlinson wrote, “A book of outstanding quality is not worth its price if no one will read it.” The view espoused by Rawlinson and others gives a great deal of attention to best sellers, since it is demand which makes a book a best seller. This is not a new issue; Rawlinson quotes John Cotton Dana, writing nearly a century ago.

To provide a comparative review of the teaching of Readers' Advisory Services in schools of library and information science in selected schools in the USA, Canada and Europe.

After reviewing the literature, schools are selected based on their known activity in providing readers' advisory service courses or on their national ranking (in the case of US schools) to provide a snapshot of current level of readers' advisory instruction.

Instruction in readers' advisory services is a very small part of the total curriculum in schools examined. Librarians who wish to gain more insight to readers' advisory services must depend on continuing education opportunities, such as workshops and conference programs, not on courses in the curriculum of schools of library and information science.

This paper raises questions as to the relationship between library and information science curricula and the needs of practicing librarians to provide services to leisure readers. It finds that, despite an increased interest in providing readers' advisory services in libraries, library education is not responding to that need and continuing education and training programs are essential to providing librarians who are well prepared to serve leisure readers. For schools which are contemplating adding coursework in these areas, the case studies detail courses as they are offered at other institutions.

The term “library management” covers many different aspects of the way that a library is operated and conjures up different concepts in the minds of different people, depending on their own interests, agendas and requirements. Research into the subject is even more difficult to define because the application of research in one field can be vital to the development of another. Some researchers would not consider their research central to library matters at all, whereas the practising librarian might well see it as casting new light on a difficult area of understanding or development.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the eighteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1991. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

Given the variety of a reference librarian's duties, it is difficult to measure the quality of his or her performance. In this article, Tom Carter describes the employee evaluation procedure used at an academic library, and explains the principles on which the method is based.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources and research and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the twenty‐first to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1994. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

The children's room in my hometown library in Marion, Ohio, was a bright, comforting site, with low shelves of colorful books on every imaginable topic and a desk where kids could, under the librarian's careful guidance, use a red date‐due stamp to check out their own books.