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In the year 2000 Eusidic will be thirty years old. I throw in that piece of information to let you know that Eusidic has already been around a long time and is therefore ‘a good thing’; so that I can reminisce about the old days if I feel like it; but, more importantly, to be able to say when the time comes — ‘ah, well, Eusidic has seen many predictions over the years, some have been good, some have been bad.’

Telecommunications are fundamental to the online industry and this article seeks to place telecommunications networks within the context of information retrieval. The history of network development is discussed against a background and explanation of the various technical forms of telecommunications networks that existed at the beginning of the nineteen sixties and have since developed. The remainder of the paper examines the networking resources that have become available since 1984.

(The European Association of Information Services: http://www.vito.be/eusidic/homepage.htm>) retires at the end of this year. In keeping with this issue's Focus theme of ‘the changing face of information’ we asked him about the changes and events he had seen in his five years in the position. What have been the main changes in the information world in your time at Eusidic? And the highlights?

On the basis that the platform for user equipment for the 1990s is reasonably predictable, the creation of a new generation of user interface facilities can be started. The Esprit project TOOTSI (Telematic Object Oriented Tools for Services Interfaces) has as its objective the creation of a toolkit for building user interfaces to business information services using the GUI paradigm. The project brings together a unique combination of companies, active in the provision of actual services to the information community. This paper will describe the results of the initial two years of work on TOOTSI covering the decision making on the application platform and the design of the elements which will make up the toolkit. A prediction of the actual services to be developed is also included.

I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert on transborder data flow (TBDF). On reflection I do not know what it takes to be an expert in the subject. It is however a subject which has taxed the minds of a large number of people in the information industry since the early 1980s and also a number of our public administrators. In that sense as I happen to be employed by an international administration it is inevitable that I should have come in contact with TBDF discussions at various levels. I will however, during this presentation, concern myself mostly with a review of the implications of TBDF. In so doing I will try to cover the following aspects:

Did you know that Unesco produces twenty‐two computerised databases and that thirty‐nine information systems or services are available through FAO? So what, you might say, but it is nonetheless interesting. This directory lists 615 selected information systems, services and databases set up by thirty‐eight United Nations agencies. It contains almost twice as many entries as the previous edition which appeared in 1978.

The historical and policy development of the project of the Commission of the European Communities to develop an information network for the nine Member States of the European Community is described. Network standards and their importance, the role of the common carriers in Europe and the future structure of information networking is also described.

Digital information is exploding, being used for research, scientific, business, industrial, personal, and entertainment purposes. Notes that to preserve this new way of creating and storing information is extremely important.and suggests that advocacy in educating the public, designing best‐practice policies, and using various preservation techniques is necessary.

The quotation from Henry Longfellow's The Arrow and the Song: first appeared in the Target 2000 column in the first issue of the relaunched Online & CDROM Review in 1993. Since then a number of arrows have been aimed at developments that could be expected by the turn of the century. As this column was envisaged as a “floating Delphi”, this seems an appropriate point in the run‐up to the millennium to review the projections made to date. Below they have been reviewed and grouped, and it is hoped that in the coming months the authors may wish to expand or revise their original thoughts. The year, volume, issue and page numbers for the journal reference are given after the author’s name.

In ten years' time the CD‐ROM version of the Oxford English dictionary may well contain a number of entries for ‘online’, one of them being: