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Data were gathered on acknowledgements in five leading information science journals for the years 1991‐1999. The results were compared with data from two earlier studies of the same journals. Analysis of the aggregate data (1971‐1999) confirms the general impression that acknowledgement has become an institutionalised element of the scholarly communication process, reflecting the growing cognitive and structural complexity of contemporary research.

In an earlier article we surveyed the convergence and integration of major players in the information industry. The trend towards vertical integration, which can be observed in the macromarket, is also evident in the operations of individual online hosts — the micromarket. In this article we look at the vending of online business data, a sector in which commercial bias is strong and where market patterns mimic those of the larger theatre.

The use of bibliometric techniques to assess the scientific activity of Third World countries is not new. Cross‐national comparisons using publications and citation counts may point up relative strengths and weaknesses at the macro level, but there is also a need to evaluate specific fields in particular countries.

The trend towards massification and consolidation in electronic publishing was observed by Schiller in 1980, and is confirmed in the base maps drawn by McLaughlin for the Harvard Program in Information Policy Research. Schiller found the already apparent massification of the communications industry worrying, as links between the US government and the two major players, IBM and AT & T, were strong and likely to increase.

In the spring of 1982, I published an article in Reference Services Review on marketing libraries and information services. The article covered available literature on that topic from 1970 through part of 1981, the time period immediately following Kotler and Levy's significant and frequently cited article in the January 1969 issue of the Journal of Marketing, which was first to suggest the idea of marketing nonprofit organizations. The article published here is intended to update the earlier work in RSR and will cover the literature of marketing public, academic, special, and school libraries from 1982 to the present.

Federal attempts to stimulate technological innovation have been unsuccessful because of the application of an inappropriate policy framework that lacks conceptual and empirical knowledge of the process of technological innovation and fails to acknowledge the relationship between knowledge production, transfer, and use as equally important components of the process of knowledge diffusion. This article argues that the potential contributions of high‐speed computing and networking systems will be diminished unless empirically derived knowledge about the information‐seeking behavior of the members of the social system is incorporated into a new policy framework. Findings from the NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project are presented in support of this assertion.

“Who is the Adaptive Information Manager” ran the somewhat gnomic slogan on the cover of the A5 brochure I extracted from the breakfast time post. Below this early morning conundrum was portrayed a shorts beclad female behind with person attached striding purposefully into what looked like some latterday plate glass Grove of Academe. “Find out on 17–20 March 1987 …” was an exhortation I did not at once heed for an assiduous foreign guest thrust at me across the toast and marmalade the A4 prospectus of the University of Strathclyde's Department of Information Studies, its cover all VDUs and keyboards, a laser disc rampant against a background of a book or two. It reminded me that the Department was “one of the leaders in British information studies …” (Times Higher Educational Supplement). With this information I thought I knew the identity of the Adaptive Information Manager, but when 1 opened the A5 brochure it turned out to be about Aslib's 59th Annual Conference at the University of Sussex and Blaise Cronin wasn't down to give a paper. However, that Adaptive Something‐or‐Other Manager, Smith‐Sutton (as he is wont to identify himself in conference discussions) was down to give a talk on “Marketing the library”. The accompanying blurb notes that he “has been closely involved in the ambitious, highly innovative formation of the Central Library at Sutton”.

I have a confession to make. I wrote a paper, The marketing of libraries, which turned out to be a poor man's Blaise Cronin. My sin was not to ask the elementary questions of the Aslib request for my presence — namely: ‘What, when, where and why?’ Had I done so I would have got to ‘Why’ and saved myself some hours of writing and research. Why then did Aslib ask me? The answer must be that Sutton has succeeded in crashing the normally impenetrable barrier between public and special libraries. Possibly its razzmatazz, its well‐oiled publicity machine — even its maverick temerity to accept that libraries are not, and probably cannot be, ‘open and free’, may have struck a spark in your conference organising committee's consciousness.

Personal acknowledgements are commonplace in the scholarly communication process. The scale and significance of the phenomenon vary from field to field, and from journal to journal. Variation in practice is revealed in a twenty‐year analysis of acknowledgements in four of the top‐ranked information/library science journals (1971–1990). A small number of individuals are highly acknowledged; a majority are mentioned infrequently, if ever. The concentration is similar to that found in citation analyses of research productivity. There is a positive rank order correlation between frequency of acknowledgement and citation frequency. The implications for both institutional and individual evaluation are discussed.

A bibliometric profile of four information science journals is developed. Data on acknowledgements to funding sources, authors‘ nationalities and the citedness of published articles are analysed. The relationships among these variables are explored. Citedness appears to be associated with journal of publication and an author’s nationality, but not with funding.