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Describes the introduction of the electronic database Dow Jones News/Retrieval (DJN/R) as a teaching tool in the library of the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Discusses the nature of the database service, its price structure and the reasons for its selection. The anticipated educational benefits are detailed and an initial estimate indicates its considerable benefit to students and staff.

Collection building in today’s technologically rich library environment should include library mission statements that embody all types of formats. It has become the role of the librarian to revisit mission statements and collection development policies periodically and examine the contents for the latest in technology. All library resources formats should be encompassed in the statements developed. The library mission statement should be clear and concise. It is important that the document should project the university’s and library’s goals and objectives. Working in conjunction with the university’s goals, the mission statement should become a foundation for the collection development decision process.

Operating within their fiscal allotments, today’s information professionals are debating the best methods for evaluating the acquisition of a wide array of electronic information resources. Electronic publishing is affecting not only the way scholars conduct their research, but also the selection process librarians use in acquiring these products. Although electronic information resources have many advantages, the financial implications of implementing new technologies have yet to be fully revealed. The impact of these financial implications creates new scenarios librarians must consider when examining the budgetary implications of selecting print or electronic materials ‐ or, in some cases, several versions of the same resource. Among the many questions information professional face in this explosive environment is how do we decide which product will best serve the needs of the institution today and in the future and how can we provide all that is requested by the university’s community in an environment of static or shrinking budgets? Offers a subjective evaluation model for comparing the desirable and undesirable potential of a proposed acquisition.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the nineteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1992. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of e-government reforms on street-level bureaucrats’ professionalism and relation to citizens, thus demonstrating how the bureaucratic encounter unfolds in the digital era.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study of frontline work at a citizen service centre in a Danish municipality, and draws on empirical material generated through observations, field notes, interviews and policy documents.

The paper shows that e-government changes the mode of professionalism in citizen service from service to support. An ethnographic account of how digital reforms are implemented in practice shows how street-level bureaucrat’s classic tasks such as specialized casework are being reconfigured into educational tasks that promote the idea of “becoming digital”. In the paper, the author argues that the work of “becoming digital” in client processing entails two interconnected changes in frontline agents’ practice: de-specialization of the task and intensified informality in relation to citizens. As a result, the frontline agent works as an explorative generalist whose professional skills and personal competencies are blurred.

The study contributes to ethnographic research in public administration by combining two separate subfields, e-government and street-level bureaucracy, to discern recent transformations in public service delivery. In the digital era, tasks, control and equality are distributed in ways that call for symmetrical and relational approaches to studying street-level bureaucracy. The argument goes beyond technological or social determinism to find a fruitful intermediary position pointing at technological change as having both constraining and enabling effects.