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Electronic publishing (EP) is taken to mean the collection, storage, manipulation and distribution of information held in electronic form, and consumed via a computer VDU screen. EP and computer‐mediated communication (CMC) systems are potentially powerful educational tools offering advantages like amplifying teacher and student input, encouraging a resource‐based, transactional approach to learning, providing experience of computer‐supported cooperative working (CSCW), and enhancing students' feedback and self‐monitoring. ‘JIMMY’, an electronic publishing and communication environment on a Vax minicomputer at Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, and its use by arts, business and health care students and staff, is described. Work in progress includes providing remote access from clinical placement sites and evaluating the use of CMC for information management education.

USER STUDIES proliferate in the literature of librarianship and information science. As early as 1967 one bibliography of library use studies contained 547 references. The popularity of the user study is probably a function of the service‐orientation of contemporary library philosophy. Librarians have become increasingly sensitive to user requirements and the user study offers a means of defining a library's clientele, establishing levels of demand for various services, and tailoring those services to meet the interests of that clientele. While some user studies have restricted themselves to gathering data about patterns of library use, many aim at evaluating users' attitudes to the library, and assessing the degree of satisfaction being achieved.

Appropriately, perhaps, the literature of library acquisitions is largely devoted to topics such as records management, vendor evaluation, selection sources, fugitive materials, budgeting, etc., rather than to the accounting aspects of acquisitions work. In core librarianship textbooks the same pattern applies, a small minority only addressing themselves to purchasing procedures in any detail. This paper attempts to reconsider the applicability of centralized and standardized purchasing procedures such as prevail in large‐scale public or commercial organisations for the purposes of library acquisitions, and offers some comment on the potential impact of automation in this context.

The scope and activities of the library of the International Airports Projects (IAP) office of the Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are described. The IAP Library has favoured the application of technology‐intensive techniques, including the development of a computerised Library Administration System (LAS), which makes use of UK and LC MARC tapes. Future developments may include interfacing with a computer‐indexed automated microfiche retrieval system. It is suggested that library and information provision in Saudi Arabia may be entering a period of rapid expansion.

The Library of the International Airport Projects of the Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has installed an interactive online system using MARC tapes from which records are selected and transposed into a local format using compression techniques on the ADABAS DBMS. The investigation reported here was to determine sub‐field record lengths. It was considered necessary to undertake this despite data provided by BLAISE based on a sample of 22569 records, since Tags often covered a number of data elements. By analysing tapes covering the years 1950–1980, it was possible to determine the maximum length of any field, frequency of occurrence, and so on. The total number of records was 633,930. The results are described and sample sets of data included.

The trend towards linking psychological research to problems of the librarian‐client interface is discussed. A more vigorous, scientific approach to these problems is recommended, using the methodology of the experimental psychologist. This methodology is explained; an example experiment then demonstrates the effect of ‘busyness’ of library staff on the frequency of approach by users. Librarians may be disillusioned by the inability of psychological research to produce simple and final answers to complex questions, but the experimental approach demonstrated should be adopted as a method of establishing a scientifically valid literature of librarian‐client behaviour.

The passer‐by had already flipped a couple of smooth‐edged coins into the upturned flat cap when his eye was caught by the placard captioning the slightly shabby personage seated on the pavement beside it. The placard read: ‘Help a poor information scientist with three hungry kids and a football team to support.’ The passer‐by paused suspiciously and enquired, ‘What's an information scientist then? You're not one of these new religions are you?’

AT FIRST glance the leading article in NLW for June, entitled ‘Reform again’, suggested a stirring of the loins of that dormant beast local government reorganisation and not—as it turned out—the structure of the Library Association. Of the former some might exclaim, ‘Not that again!’ in the belief that the 1974 upheaval is too fresh and painful in the memory for objective consideration. But, for a number of reasons, a re‐appraisal of the situation is timely. First, although the polemics of victors may fashion a version of history for a few years, unsound principles do not remain dominant forever. Secondly, a number of district councils are renewing their efforts to reclaim some services, including libraries, lost to the English counties in 1974. And, even if they fail, it is probable that when there is a new government in a year or so (of whatever hue) the botched job emanating from the 1972 Local Government Act will be tidied up. Then, at the very least, the politicians will see to it that there is a major revision of boundaries, if only to recognise the existence of modern communications and living styles, both of which have a marked effect on that which politicians hold most dear— voting patterns. Therefore, in the profound hope that local government lunacy cannot continously triumph over commonsense, it can be assumed that at the next re‐organisation the nature of local government functions and their distribution will not be regarded as favours to be horse traded in the same way that some senior posts were allocated in 1974. (‘Our borough engineer for your librarian and public health inspector’…remember?)

IT WAS in the mid‐1970s when, having been in the habit for a year or so previously of commenting on public library authorities' annual reports in a partially analytical manner, I observed a decline in the arrival of the same in my post. A decline which has been maintained, I may add, and which has led me to the conclusion that, while it is OK on the sender's part if I remark how splendid has his service been, he would nevertheless be happier if the ammunition was withheld for me to observe that his annual loans cost x‐pence more each than those of such‐and‐such an authority!