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CD‐ROM products that have been introduced to replace online, microform, or print information products perform “as advertised”—they cost less to use than online, are more convenient to use than microform, and retrieve information more precisely than print. Still, they are only retrieval systems designed to replace retrieval systems.

Shipbuilding has been slow to adopt TQM practices, but the author argues that recession is forcing the industry to consider quality techniques as a matter of survival. Charts the progress of the shipbuilding industry over the past 20 years, including the worldwide decline in shipyard capacity, and the types of problem found in modern shipyards among management and the various departments involved. Suggests ways in which shipbuilding can embrace the TQM philosophy, including management commitment and support and a fresh emphasis on the customer ‐ however the customer is defined. Predicts the likely outcome of such a policy, with the attendant benefits in efficiency and satisfaction, and suggests methods of assessing these gains. Concludes that the time has come for shipbuilding to explore TQM as a matter of urgency.

Local databases that are designed for use with microcomputers are now starting to appear. They employ two basic recording media: magnetic media and media designed to be read by a laser. This article describes databases published by Knowledge Access, Inc. These databases will initially be available on floppy disk, and in the future on CD‐ROM.

The amount of information that could be distributed in the world increased by many orders of magnitude with the invention of movable type and the printing press. Then, however, the basic tools of publishing remained almost unchanged for four centuries after Gutenberg.

The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the history and development of transaction log analysis (TLA) in library and information science research. Organizing a literature review of the first twenty‐five years of TLA poses some challenges and requires some decisions. The primary organizing principle could be a strict chronology of the published research, the research questions addressed, the automated information retrieval (IR) systems that generated the data, the results gained, or even the researchers themselves. The group of active transaction log analyzers remains fairly small in number, and researchers who use transaction logs tend to use this method more than once, so tracing the development and refinement of individuals' uses of the methodology could provide insight into the progress of the method as a whole. For example, if we examine how researchers like W. David Penniman, John Tolle, Christine Borgman, Ray Larson, and Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu have modified their own understandings and applications of the method over time, we may get an accurate sense of the development of all applications.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

This chapter introduces the Person-in-Environment (PIE) framework, a research design and a nationwide empirical study, developed by the author, to measure the relative impacts of socio-structural and personal factors on individual-level information behaviours (IB) and outcomes. The IB field needs to tackle two questions: (1) In a particular situation, how much of an individual's IB is influenced by personal characteristics? and (2) How much of this behaviour is shaped by one's environment, such as socio-structural barriers? PIE is a beginning effort to address this agency–structure debate, which is a topic that confronts many social scientists. This chapter first outlines IB research relevant to agency–structure integration. It then presents six principles of the PIE framework. Personal characteristics (e.g. cognitive and affective factors) and socio-structural factors (e.g. information resources distribution) are conceptualised as interrelated. Thus, these need to be tested simultaneously. Previously, it was difficult to link individual- and societal-level datasets because their units of observation often vary. To overcome these methodological challenges, this author purposed a research design that employs secondary analysis, geographic information systems techniques and structural equation modelling. An empirical study of the library usage by 13,000 American 12th graders is presented to demonstrate PIE's applicability. Discussions on the future directions of PIE studies conclude the chapter. The PIE framework can contribute to conceptual and methodological development in IB research. It also offers scholars and policymakers a way to empirically assess the contributions of information services on an individual's life, while taking personal differences into account.