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I am very happy to be back in Poland again after a 3 year absence. I see a great many changes and I am happy to tell you that I see them all as constructive things that are happening. Speaking from my side of the ocean my country wishes you very well in your effort to move forward to becoming a part of the full EEC. I am sure you will reach that goal eventually and hopefully sooner than later. One of your speakers yesterday mentioned tourism and he put it in a “maybe” kind of context. From my standpoint there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who would like to be over here in your beautiful country spending money.

British information specialists and librarians in business information are recession‐proof, according to a new survey from TFPL. From a field of 600 professionals queried, TFPL found that 78% had had pay rises over the past year. Salaries and fringe benefits rose a whopping 18% on average over the eighteen months between April 1989 to October 1991. The majority had increases between 5–9% — however, a lucky few (17.5%) enjoyed rises of 10–25%. Given the economic climate, the proportion of survey participants who had recently received salary increases (78%) and the generosity of these increases seems to indicate that organisations are valuing their information specialists now more than ever, says TFPL.

InfoMapping is a methodology developed by the author and a Canadian colleague, Cornelius F. Burk, and first put forward in their 1988 Prentice‐Hall book, InfoMap: The Complete Guide to Discovering Corporate Information Resources. In that book the authors set forth a five‐step process that any organization can follow if and when they ‘get serious’ about managing information as a valued but costly organizational resource. The first step is to develop a baseline inventory of all critical information resources. InfoMapping is the trademarked term they give to developing a metainformation system wherein each major information resource in the organization, whether manual or automated, whether created internally or acquired externally, is profiled and an online record (‘Information Resource Entity’ or IRE) created. Over 100 data elements are involved in profiling each IRE. A software DBMS product called InfoMapper, programmed as a runtime application using dBASE IV, is also discussed.

In the Court of Appeal last summer, when Van Den Berghs and Jurgens Limited (belonging to the Unilever giant organization) sought a reversal of the decision of the trial judge that their television advertisements of Stork margarine did not contravene Reg. 9, Margarine Regulations, 1967—an action which their Lordships described as fierce but friendly—there were some piercing criticisms by the Court on the phrasing of the Regulations, which was described as “ridiculous”, “illogical” and as “absurdities”. They also remarked upon the fact that from 1971 to 1975, after the Regulations became operative, and seven years from the date they were made, no complaint from enforcement authorities and officers or the organizations normally consulted during the making of such regulations were made, until the Butter Information Council, protecting the interests of the dairy trade and dairy producers, suggested the long‐standing advertisements of Reg. 9. An example of how the interests of descriptions and uses of the word “butter” infringements of Reg. 9. An example af how the interests of enforcement, consumer protection, &c, are not identical with trade interests, who see in legislation, accepted by the first, as injuring sections of the trade. (There is no evidence that the Butter Information Council was one of the organizations consulted by the MAFF before making the Regulations.) The Independant Broadcasting Authority on receiving the Council's complaint and obtaining legal advice, banned plaintiffs' advertisements and suggested they seek a declaration that the said advertisements did not infringe the Regulations. This they did and were refused such a declaration by the trial judge in the Chancery Division, whereupon they went to the Court of Appeal, and it was here, in the course of a very thorough and searching examination of the question and, in particular, the Margarine Regulations, that His Appellate Lordship made use of the critical phrases we have quoted.

Perhaps my most serious misgiving about Charles Oppenheim's article in the February '94 issue of Aslib Proceedings is that he has approached the Info Mapper software with certain prejudicial and stereotyped concepts of: 1) what Info Mapper really is, and is supposed to accomplish; 2) what data base management systems are; 3) the difference between a computer programming language, such as ‘C’ or ‘C+’ (in which Info Mapper was programmed), a generalized DBMS software package that is sold ‘off the shelf’, and in applications software package like Info Mapper; and 4) his failure to follow clear instructions in the documentation accompanying Info Mapper (especially the Project Managers Guide) — which, in turn, led to all manner of problems that could have been entirely precluded, or at least ameliorated, and for which he blames the software instead of adequate preparation, planning, and giving the client enough time to work through problems.

We deeply regret to announce the death of Mr. E. Richards Bolton, F.I.C., M.I.Chem.E., who passed away suddenly on February 10th. He had a distinguished career, and among the numerous offices which he had filled, he had been President of the Society of Public Analysts, Vice‐President of the Institute of Chemistry, and a member of the Council of the Chemical Society. His death will be felt as a personal loss by many members of the profession.

Discusses the current business enthusiasm for intellectual capital and knowledge management and how the librarian should, in principle, take center stage in the intellectual capital and knowledge management process. Proposes a general prescriptive for the process and the librarian′s potential role therein. Specifically, recommends initiating this process with an annual report of the “state of the union” of intellectual capital, from a “value added to the learning organization” viewpoint. Identifies specific items that could be treated in such a report and concludes with an annotated bibliography of key articles in both the business and library literature.

Taking as its starting point the view that information literacy (IL) and information literacy education (ILE) are essential for national, social and personal development in countries of the less developed world, this chapter looks at how context informs our understanding of the nature and process of IL and ILE in developing countries of the Asian region, with particular attention to Cambodia and Laos. The principal focus is on definitional issues related to cultural contexts. From the literature and from personal experience as IL/ILE trainers in SE Asia, we maintain that extant definitions and understanding of IL are principally North American in origin and focus, or largely based on the North American perception of IL and ILE. It was not until the mid-years of the first decade of this century that we saw formal recognition that IL competencies are being applied within cultural and social contexts, and that cultural factors are affecting information literacy. Our chapter contributes ‘on-the-ground’ support for this understanding. During the course of a series of IL/ILE workshops in Cambodia and Laos, a series of ad hoc focus groups was utilised to test the contextual effects on understandings of information literacy; contextualised definitions, each specific to and slightly different for individual countries, were developed. What emerged from the focus group discussions about IL was a series of definitional nuances highlighting these key points: (1) information literacy in definition and practice must be contextually grounded; (2) knowledge creation as a product of information literacy is both knowledge based and problem focused; (3) the contexts of a society must be understood quite specifically; and may be unique to each society; and (4) information literacy involves a continuum that comes from and at the same time enables new learning related to the contextual aspects of information. Given these points, we confirm that traditional definitions of IL are not particularly robust in the context of less developed Asian countries. Further, we conclude that local understanding of IL results in definitions aligned with the realities of specific societies. This in our view leads to more robust, contextualised information literacy education.

Charles Lindblom (Professor of Economics & Political Science at Yale University) coined the term ‘disjointed incrementalism’. Lindblom was interested in the decision‐making process — the ways in which and reasons for which planners, managers and administrators arrived at particular policy decisions.