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The University of London's far‐reaching plan for a new generation of library automation has become a casualty of the UGC's latest round of cuts in funding for universities. A strategy had been developed over recent years to replace the four existing shared systems and to introduce a five to seven year phase of expansion. The integration of all library functions, the provision of online access, and emphasis on resource sharing and a rational approach to library provision in London for the remainder of the century were the main objectives. A distributed network was planned to link all the diverse libraries of the University in a common system, affording online access to shared bibliographic and, where appropriate, shared borrower data. Considerable interest in the scheme was being shown by libraries both at home and abroad.

All over the world—in research laboratories, universities, factories, plantations, hospitals—there are people wanting information. All over the world, in those same places, there are people generating information. To direct the streams of information from its innumerable sources into central reservoirs, and then to channel it as required to those who need it—this is the problem we call ‘the communication of information’. Documentation is the transfer of information through the medium of documents, and it covers a large part, though not all, of the problem under discussion. This problem is not new: it has been with us for millennia. The librarians of Alexandria knew about it. The translation academies of Baghdad tackled it. Bibliographers down the centuries have kept track of recorded information. There are numerous well‐tried methods of transferring information. Why is there such a demand, now, for research into the problem?

Governments of all major industrialized communities are steadily extending the areas in which they seek to regulate the day‐to‐day activities of ordinary people. This raises important problems in ensuring that people know what is being required of them. I shall in this paper be describing these problems as we see them in the new Health and Safety Executive (HSE). But after spending thirty years in various jobs in the public service I am sure that the problems facing us are similar to those which arise in many other fields.

Looks at contrasting views of the future of the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC); that it will become obsolete or, conversely, grow in importance. Explores the problems of co‐operative collection development, its economics, politics and terminology in both theory and practice. Examines methods for evaluating the costs of interlending, and demonstrates the limitations of a single price structure. Shows how reciprocal borrowing is becoming an increasingly popular solution to collection development.

Higher education, government, international agencies, technology and science—these have been the content of papers so far. But the need for information extends downwards as well as upwards and I want now to step down the ladder as it were and look at what is taking place in schools, primary, secondary and middle. Or to be more specific to examine some changes in school librarianship and in particular what is happening in the resource‐providing agencies which have grown up to meet the ever widening demands for recorded information in teaching and learning. These demands are now as much visual as verbal and it is reasonable to expect that the present generation of students will begin to look for the multi media provision they have grown accustomed to at school to be reflected in their local public library or through the organization for which they work.

Three decades of academic and professional discourse on HR technologies (HRTs) have produced continued disagreement over construct definitions and research streams that are highly fragmented. These realities suggest that greater consistency in meanings is sorely needed if we are to integrate and upgrade knowledge in this area. This chapter draws on the findings of a systematic research review to properly define the content domains of human resource information systems (HRIS), virtual human resources (virtual HR), electronic human resource management (e-HRM), and business-to-employee (B2E) systems. An integrative synthesis was performed on 242 system-level writings that appeared in the literature from 1983 to 2017. The weight of the evidence strongly supports treating HRIS, virtual HR, e-HRM, and B2E systems as independent, complimentary constructs. While the first three comprise a firm’s HRT system, the fourth construct is more appropriately positioned in the business-collaborative system. The sample was further evaluated with an analytic framework to detect patterns of practice in research designs. This revealed that much more attention has been focused on system actions and outcomes than on attitudes and system characteristics. Different units of analysis were well represented aside from trans-organizational studies. Finally, a case is made for better contextualizing HRT research by recognizing differences in assimilation stage, functional penetration, and collective proficiency. These factors are rarely mentioned, let alone studied, raising additional concerns about measurement error. Detailed suggestions are offered on ways to incorporate them. Together, these materials should promote more sophisticated and generalizable assessments of technology, improving our ability to understand its impacts.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Presents a review on implementing finite element methods on supercomputers, workstations and PCs and gives main trends in hardware and software developments. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on the subjects retrospectively to 1985 and approximately 1,100 references are listed.