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Collecting Institutions in the Network Society is a multidisciplinary PhD study examining present practices and policies of collecting institutions (museums, galleries, libraries and archives) in their use and development of digital technologies, within the context of wider socio-technical change. It investigates whether existing service paradigms are best suited to future digital delivery of services in the emergent network society.

It uses an interpretive methodological approach creating a body of phenomenological evidence enabling comparison between the organisational context, internal practices, histories and policies of collecting institutions, and the wider socio-technical impact of the internet. Literature reviews provide evidence from the “outer world” of internet developments and impact to establish four generic drivers of internet change. For the “inner world” of collecting institutions, organisational context and research and development on innovation are examined to analyse various perspectives on common approaches to service policy and practice. Additionally, textual analysis of institutional mission statements and policy documents is used to establish the degree of common purpose across collecting institutions and the preparedness of practitioners and policymakers to deal with rapid socio-technical change.

The evidence is synthesised to define an institutional paradigm describing the present operational processes and practices of collecting institutions. This is compared with the four generic drivers to define opportunities and challenges that collecting institutions face in exploiting the internet. This synthesis demonstrates that the siloised and fragmented nature of the institutional paradigm creates significant barriers to effective exploitation. Evidence from the textual analysis is used to develop a shared mission statement for all collecting institutions as the foundation of a strategic digital future.

The study proposes a radically new service paradigm (the digital knowledge ecology) enabling collecting institutions to achieve maximum user value in their delivery of digital services, and concludes with proposals for actions to build a collective strategy.

This conference was sponsored by Unesco, and organisations involved with information and documentation in West Germany. Although papers on many applications were presented, Unesco had funded a pre‐conference seminar on the uses of microcomputers in information work in developing countries, and this was a theme which re‐appeared during the conference itself. Whilst over 300 delegates from 53 countries attended, all papers were presented and will be published in English.

From time to time the BNB Research Fund arranges seminars to consider topics of significance to all sides of the book world. Attendance is carefully orchestrated to ensure that a wide range of opinion is represented and ample opportunity is provided for discussion. The topic of this seminar — the bibliographic record — is clearly important to everyone in the book world and with the increasing use and public availability of machine‐readable records was a most timely chance to review problems and practices.

As may be evident from its sub‐title, Text Retrieval 86, the fourth text retrieval seminar organised by the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS), was targeted at an application area which is becoming topical in many organisational environments — the linking of office automation (OA) techniques, word processing, e‐mail, database management, etc. with full text software packages capable of storing massive amounts of data. The hardware and software to do this are available and several commercial systems claim to provide complete integration. Yet as the seminar programme stated, little consideration has so far been given to, ‘… the organisation, storage and retrieval of the mass of information which will be fed into them.’

Briefly reviews the nature of the information society and discusses its revolutionary aspects. Examines the main characteristics of the new information revolution in relation to the UK Government’s expressed policy, stressing network infrastructure, content creation and national IT training. Illustrates the nature of changes by some new developments within Croydon libraries: CD‐ROM network, public access training resources, Croydon Online. A discussion of lifelong learning leads to examination of the function of the public library and its greatly strengthened future role as an information and enabling force within the community.

With networking becoming ubiquitous amongst automated activities, the need for standards which ease the burden of accessing systems by end‐users of widely differing abilities is paramount. The development of network systems, particularly in relation to library activity, is outlined and some of the search tools and standards, both current and emerging, are described.

It is usual in the VINE overview to commence with some kind of definition of the theme being covered. This time however the title appears straightforward (none of those obscure acronyms) and understandable. Nevertheless, what do we understand by public library networking? Many public libraries have been networked locally for many years; many have also operated various forms of regional networks for many years. However these kind of networks no longer count as real networking, in the age of the Internet. What is being considered in this issue is the linking of the public libraries to the global networks, or the eventual so‐called Information Superhighway (or was it the Super Information Highway, as one MP unfortunately blundered last week). In fact the nomenclature makes little difference because it does not yet exist, according to considered opinion. However the concept of the information superhighway is fully examined in the article following this, so will not be pursued here.

Today Croydon, tomorrow the world Chris Batt, Borough Libraries and Museum Officer for the London Borough of Croydon, believes that public libraries can use the Internet to become the most important players in the future development of their communities. Physically and virtually, the public library is the enabling institution for everyone. The Internet, and community computing, mean that new networks of interaction and new paradigms of service can be created. At February's Computers in Libraries conference, Mr Batt described Croydon's plans, and how they are being put into practice.

What can be written about Library Management Systems (LMS) that might make interesting reading? This may seem a rather downbeat opening to an overview of the various makes of systems you can read about in this issue, but it is a fact noted recently by Chris Batt that: these days, in the public library sector at least, attention has become focussed on the exciting medium of the Internet, and in common with other sectors the LMS is rightly seen as one system amongst others. Having said that, within the pages that follows the reader is treated to the recent experiences of some of the current offerings in the marketplace. The trepidation for some of setting out on the procurement path may be allayed by the information in the articles, and one aspect to particularly look out for is the opportunity offered by some of these systems to access the wider world of information and the integration of these systems to remote and distributed databases. In this article it is proposed to set out an overall context against which these systems operate and to point out the main features of change as we draw to the end of the 1990's.

According to Chris Batt's Information Technology in Public Libraries (Fifth Edition, Library Association, 1994) Hertfordshire is one of only three public libraries to report a network in operation which provides CD‐ROM access over a Local Area Network. This article outlines the trials and tribulations of developing a system under tight constraints.