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Mountbatten offers a vivid description of the current‐awareness function using the analogy of a very wide conveyor‐belt, representing the information publishers, on which books, periodicals and reports appear at random: ‘The searcher is on a platform just above the belt and as the information material passes underneath he can pick up and read anything that he thinks might be of interest to him. You can imagine his frustration as he realises that for every item he takes time to examine, hundreds of others of possible interest to him have passed by’. Personality and environment will determine whether the individual can find an intelligent compromise between the extremes of neurosis induced by worrying about the material he is missing, or complacency with any system which produces one or two interesting items.

The paper reports an intensive survey of medical library users in the Oxford teaching hospitals and the University science departments. Six survey techniques were used and selected results are given for each. It was concluded that the characteristic having most influence on information‐seeking behaviour and library usage was the relative amounts of the user's time devoted to clinical practice and to research respectively. Three distinct user types were identified and ‘rich picture’ descriptions based on the survey evidence are given for each. A second paper will describe a systems study which linked the survey to library management decision‐making.

Thirty years or more ago, a favoured question in examination papers for librarians was some variation on the theme ‘Compare the merits of a classified catalogue and an alphabetical subject catalogue’. This was a subject which it was possible to write on or to discuss at great length, advancing a number of theoretical arguments or opinions expressed by pundits, without ever stating a single demonstrable fact. When, in the early 1950's, various people, such as Taube and Mooers, proposed new techniques for indexing, the reaction from the traditionally‐minded was such that it appeared there was to be a repetition of all the old arguments. In an editorial in American Documentation in 1955, Perry expressed a viewpoint, shared by many others, when he wrote:

International schools are a growing class of educational institution. It has been suggested that few schools of this type have a marketing plan whilst research into development planning showed that few had a long‐range plan. This paper aims to investigate these issues.

This paper deals with a survey of 32 international schools in 22 different countries. The public relations practitioner in each was questioned as to the nature of the marketing planning process.

Half of the schools had a marketing plan. Few had a one‐year one, and few had a cyclical one with stages. Several had dispensed with such a plan. The major aim of marketing planning was to attract more students. There was little evidence of it being a strategic process. Few schools involved the whole school body.

This involved a small‐scale survey of international schools at a time when student numbers were high. This survey failed to take into account the growth of this type of school in mainland China.

It is suggested that perhaps some international schools might focus more on non‐rational planning and scenario‐building techniques. Making more contact with the local community might also be beneficial as a strategic marketing aim.

This paper furthers the understanding of the nature and organizational culture of international schools. It builds upon earlier research into development planning in this type of school.

Information retrieval is a sequence of selection and discrimination steps, aimed at the production of progressively smaller subsets. A great multitude of documents are prepared for publication by aspiring authors and though editorial control produces some weeding‐out, a high proportion are probably published in one form or another. From this published literature are selected those items to be included in the large indexing and abstracting journals, on the grounds of either quality or subject matter. These publications are then searched by human scanner or computer to select the small minority of bibliographic records which may be of interest to the ultimate user. Then it is the user's turn. He selects from the bibliographic listing a yet smaller number of documents he wishes to view and, finally and occasionally, in a few of the documents he reads, he finds useful information: a datum, an experimental method, the barely discerned inkling of an idea.

Describes the development and use of GRIP, an online information storage and retrieval system for personal indexes, using a Hewlett Packard 2100S minicomputer. Users are able to compile their own files consisting of completely unformatted records, and searching is carried out online from remote terminals often in the user's own laboratory. The potential use of the system is indicated and further possible developments outlined.

The developments in the use of computer systems in libraries from 1966 to date have been great. This report, written to coincide with the twenty‐first anniversary of the publication of Program, looks at some of these developments, in Britain, in North America, and in other countries. It traces the history of library automation from the early experimental systems through to the co‐operative systems, the locally developed systems, the mini‐ and microcomputer‐based and stand‐alone integrated systems that are available today.

Semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews were used to explore the influence of personality, discipline and organisational structure on the information behaviour of biochemists, entomologists and statisticians working at an agricultural research station (n = 67). Cluster analysis was used to reveal groupings in the data. Library and document‐based activities did not differentiate individuals. Computer use, both for scientific work and information handling, and the degree of enthusiasm displayed for actively seeking information divided the population. Discipline, work role and time spent in the subject field and organisation were the most important determinants of information behaviour. There were some indications of male/female differences in information behaviour. A comparison of the groups obtained from the cluster analysis with a subjective classification showed the former to be more robust in later analysis.

This review aims to present a speciality to the general documentationalist. It will contain too little chemistry for the chemist, and too little documentation for the documentalist. A reviewer cannot win!

My originalthis paper was to take, from the literature, examples of successful solutions of practical problems found in using external information services. This would have been fine if there had been any examples in the literature, but there were none that I found. No one has said in print what happens when tapes are held up for three months in a dock strike, or how much it costs to re‐profile when the thesaurus is revised without consultation with the user, or how much extra work is involved when the record format is changed at short notice. No one has actually stated in public that he allowed two hours per profile and it actually required ten, or that the programming costs were three times as large as his (and his Computer Department Manager's) estimate. These things happen—but one naturally does not admit to them in print, even though by so doing one could be of inestimable value to one's professional colleagues.