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Richard Cox responds to the attacks by Nicolson Baker against the library community. Deals with each of Baker’s main points: that a lie was foisted on the public about the care of newspapers, the insidious destruction of original newspapers, the resultant loss of trust by the public in libraries and archives and a set of wrong priorities leading to the misguided microfilming and destruction of newspapers.

As the archival profession seeks a wider role in the field of information science, the need to prepare students for careers in a rapidly changing world requires multidisciplinary education, greater emphasis on core archival knowledge, and fully articulated graduate programs combining structured course sequences with practical experience and sophisticated research projects. The Society of American Archivists is currently considering new “Guidelines for a graduate program in archival studies”. This case study of the graduate program in archives and records management at Western Washington University provides one example of the diverse offerings available for archival students. The six key aspects of the Western Washington University curriculum include: linking history and archives, integrating archives and records management, emphasizing information technology, incorporating management principles, including practical experience, and requiring research for a master’s thesis.

An exploratory sample of 114 personal home pages, drawn from a home page directory available on the World Wide Web (People Page Directory: http://www.peoplepage.com), was analysed to detect patterns and trends in home page content and design. Covered in the analysis were types of informational content included in the home pages; internal organisation and structure of the content, including type and number of hypertext links; miscellaneous content elements, such as ‘sign guestbook’ and number of hits to the page; and physical design features such as photos, motion and audio elements. Metaphors used in the design of the pages and degree of self‐revelation were also considered. The home pages displayed a great variety of content and of specific types of formatting within broader formatting approaches. While some content elements were quite popular, none of them — not even name — was found on all home pages. Nor did the pages evidence reliance on any single dominant metaphor, such as home page as ‘home’ in the sense of domicile. It appears that though certain features may be frequently found in it, the personal home page as a social institution is still very much under development.

The first state high schools in New South Wales (NSW) were restricted to children with high academic ability. The purpose of this paper is to explore the lived experience of over 70 former students from three such schools, one coeducational, the other two single‐sex, with special attention to academic and social curricula.

The study investigates memories of a particular moment in the history of secondary schooling in NSW before the establishment of mass secondary education. The authors utilise theoretical concepts from recent oral history studies regarding memory communities and intersectionality.

In bringing ex‐students’ memories of both single‐sex and coeducational academically‐selective high schooling together, the study reports on the homogeneity of the memories of this type of schooling despite the different sexual structures of the schools. The respondents, it is argued, constitute a “memory community” in that they recalled their selection for high school as marking them out as intellectually superior, “special”. Their main differentiating feature arose from their sex and gender socialisation. Females were made more consistently conscious of their responsibilities within their schools’ gender regime.

The approach in this paper adjusts the focus of traditional oral history research in the history of education to “history from within” (rather than “from below”); to experiences of both academic and socialcurriculum (not “formal/informal”); to a gendered approach incorporating both sexes; and to a comparative approach across academically‐selective coeducational and single‐sex high schools.

Knowledge management systems have opened new arrays in the present digital environment. Nowadays, because of innumerable features, they have become the choice of many organizations. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the issues of a KM-based digital library system that will support the creation, organization, storage, dissemination and utilization of the institution's digital knowledge assets.

The study is based on viewpoints, a review of existing concepts and the structure of DL and KM, and on the results of an interview of ten DL practitioners world-wide. The respondents are purposively selected from the participants' lists of an international training program (ITP) on “managing electronic information and digital libraries”. The interview is conducted by e-mail using a short, structured and open-ended questionnaire.

The present study finds some significant overlaps between DL and KM and argues that a generic KM process of acquisition, organization, storage and retrieval, and dissemination of knowledge by receiving feedback can suitably be fitted in DL. It is apparent that an integration of KM can add value to building a knowledge sharing culture, promoting the KM culture, and ultimately increase the organizational output. It helps to improve efficiency, to ensure higher productivity and user satisfaction in the library.

Further research can be conducted into designing KM-based DL systems keeping in view the needs and behavior of the users they serve. A deep log analysis of the academically endeavored KM-based systems can be carried out for working out a better and productive DL. The recent study requires a practical investigation.

The outcome of the research will improve the DL system to enhance its effectiveness, staff professionalism and will help in achieving coordination. Knowledge innovation in a DL environment will help in the creation of better and an enlightened knowledge-based society.

The issues discussed here will help in achieving satisfaction levels both on the part of users as well as DL professionals. The proposed issues and structure is an original work and theoretically, they would contribute to the advancement of an academic debate in both the areas of DL and KM.

The ability to establish sustainable frameworks for creating and managing recordkeeping metadata is one of the key challenges for recordkeeping in digital and networked environments. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project, an Australian research project which sought to investigate how the movement of recordkeeping metadata between systems could be automated.

The project adopted an action research approach to the research, utilising a systems development method within this framework to iteratively build a prototype demonstrating how recordkeeping metadata could be created once in particular application environments, then used many times to meet a range of business and recordkeeping purposes.

Recordkeeping metadata interoperability, like recordkeeping metadata itself, is complex and dynamic. The research identifies the need for standards and tools to reflect and have the capacity to handle this complexity.

This paper provides insights into the complex nature of recordkeeping metadata and the kind of infrastructure that needs to be developed to support its automated capture and re‐use in integrated systems environments.