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The cultural determination of information behaviour is deeply influencing the way information is looked for, used and handled. Therefore, libraries in Central and Eastern Europe show, to a certain extent, the same characteristics due to the centralist information environment of the previous socialist rule. However, the deeply rooted belief in education and knowledge which was the pursued idea, regardless of frequent misuse by the Communist government may, in comparison to Western countries, ease the way into a knowledge society. The newly created information infrastructure in all European countries due to the technological development which will change libraries, for example in Germany, could be useless, or maybe even dangerous, without being embedded in a solid base of learning and knowledge.

Since the opening up of the Soviet bloc countries, help given to libraries from the West has mainly taken the form of donation of material. It has been difficult for Western colleagues to appreciate the full extent of the problems experienced by their counterparts in the former Soviet bloc. The most pressing problems concerned library management. Describes two seminars on library and information management set up by the Foreign Relations Bureau, Berlin, in former Soviet bloc countries. The seminars tackled the problem of management from different angles. Outlines the learning and benefits received by both Western and Eastern participants.

This paper proposes a new multi-criteria decision-making method, called the vital-immaterial-mediocre method (VIMM), to determine the weight of multiple conflicting and subjective criteria in a decision-making problem.

The novel method utilizes pairwise comparisons, vector-based procedures and a scoring approach to determine weights of criteria. The VIMM compares alternatives by the three crucial components, namely the vital, immaterial and mediocre criteria. The vital criterion has the largest effect on the final results, followed by the mediocre criterion and then the immaterial criterion, which is the least impactful on the prioritization of alternatives. VIMM is developed in two forms where the first scenario is designed to solve one-goal decision-making problems, while the second scenario embraces multiple goals.

To validate the method’s performance and applicability, VIMM is applied to a problem of sustainable supplier selection. Comparisons between VIMM, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and best-worst method (BWM) reveal that VIMM significantly requires fewer comparisons. Moreover, VIMM works well with both fractional and integer numbers in its comparison procedures.

As an implication for research, we have added the development of the VIMM under fuzzy and grey environments as the direction for optimization of the method.

As managerial implications, VIMM not only provides less complex process for the evaluation of the criteria in the managerial decision-making process, but it also generates consistent results, which make VIMM a reliable tool to apply to a large number of potential decision-making problems.

As a novel subjective weighting method, there exist five major values that VIMM brings over AHP and BWM methods: VIMM requires fewer comparisons compared with AHP and BWM; it is not sensitive to the number of criteria; as a goal-oriented method, it exclusively takes the decision-making goals into account; it keeps the validity and reliability of the Decision-Makers’ (DMs’) opinions and works well with integer and fractional numbers.

Information will play an important role in the economic, social and political development of the People's Republic of China. The information industries will be of growing importance within the Chinese economy and they will play an important part in the interaction with the international economy. Within Chinese organizations information can be used to improve productivity. Access to information is also an important element in the working of social and political systems. It is necessary to develop a range of policies to ensure that information services and systems are developed in the most effective way. When analysing the policy arena it is possible to identify three different policy levels: industrial; organizational and social. At each of these levels, there are five elements which need to be taken into account: information technology; information markets; information engineering; human resources, and legislation and regulation. By combining the levels and elements it is possible to construct an information policy matrix which can be used to analyse the policy requirements.