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The British Library Research and Development Department (BLR&DD) held its Open Day on November 14th 1990. The event was well‐publicised and drew representatives from the library and information community, along with many others from outside the profession, who came to take a closer look at the Department's work. The day took the form of an exhibition and demonstrations of various research projects, and two informal discussion sessions. The intention was to stimulate debate by giving participants the opportunity to hear about some of the research work funded by the Department, and then to put their own views. A report of the day's proceedings has been published and is available free of charge.

From Boolean operators to virtual reality…..

The quality of teaching, research and community service of lecturers coupled with their publication in any university system may depend on the quality of the electronic database they use. Electronic database awareness use is very important to the teaching, research and community service activities of lecturers in the Nigerian university system. It has been established that lack of awareness is the main factor militating against effective use of electronic databases. The study aims to investigate awareness and use of electronic databases as determinants of research productivity of academic staff in private universities in South-West Nigeria.

The descriptive survey research design of the correlational type was adopted. Out of the 27 private universities established and approved between 1999 and 2012 in South-West Nigeria, 21 were purposively covered in the study. The stratified random sampling technique based on probability proportionate to size method was adopted in selecting 1,656 (60 per cent) academic staff from the population size of 2,760. The main research instrument used to collect data for the study was questionnaire. Data generated were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Spearman’s rank was used to test hypothesis at 0.05 level of confidence.

There was a significant positive correlation between awareness and utilisation of electronic databases (r = 0.690; p < 0.05).The result of the analysis showed that there was average level of awareness of electronic databases among academic staff in private universities in South-West, Nigeria.

The study selected 21 out of the 27 private universities established and approved between 1999 and 2012 in South-West, Nigeria.

Based on the findings, the paper recommends increased investment in ICT facilities at the surveyed universities in line with the emerging digital trend in universities around the world to raise the level of awareness of electronic databases utilisation by academic staff in research.

The Primary Communications Research Centre started its life at the University of Leicester in 1976, closing down ten years later in 1986. Its objective — to study all aspects of primary communication — was unique at the time. This retrospective survey by the Project Head looks at the thinking behind the foundation of the Centre and assesses its activities.

Continuing education for library and information management Ealing College of Higher Education is using a grant from BLR&DD to examine two main areas: para‐professional education and the coordination of external course provision. The present project, which runs from October 1985 to March 1986, is building on past work at Ealing. Ealing has developed a substantial database of short courses in librarianship and information science with details of cost, duration, location and subject. The work on para‐professional education will assess staff needs and will note experience in other countries, including the United States. The study of coordination will involve surveying course providers to see how they decide what courses to arrange, and how to price and market them. Further details are available from Dr Stephen Roberts, Ealing College of Higher Education, School of Library and Information Studies, St Mary's Road, Ealing, London W5 5RF (Tel: 01–579 4111 ext.3337).

Purpose –  – To explore the searchability and search results obtained from the Central Search federated search engine product.Design/methodology/approach – Common keywords are used to test how Central Search processes the search query and how it categorizes search results by subject.Findings – Central Search offers a wide number of results but is not as effective in sorting results by subject.Research limitations/implications – The literature on federated searching is limited because of the products have only recently been released. More study is necessary to determine how effective Central Search and related federated search engines will be for more refined, subject‐specific searches.Practical implications – This assessment emphasizes some of the problematical aspects of federated searching in an academic library environment.Originality/value – Responds to the need for a practical demonstration of how federated search products such as Central Search actually perform searches and how they processes the myriad results they retrieve.

… Strange but true facts, number 7: Wandsworth is famous for more than its blue halo.

The UK Office for Library and Information Networking are engaged in a wide range of work in the area of metadata, in cooperation with various partners. Projects on metadata for Internet resource discovery, interoperability and digital preservation all point to the continuing need for something like traditional library services to organise, access and preserve networked information.

Those of us who work, or have ever worked, in academic or public libraries know “Granger” — formerly Granger's Index to Poetry and now The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry — which is almost as old as this century. As it is the only substantial index to verse for adults, it cannot be evaluated by comparison; so a reviewer is already halfway to redundancy.

The Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Springs, Maryland has added a fourth ‘R’ to the traditional school curriculum of reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic: retrieval, as in information retrieval. Students at the school are using the Dialog ClassMate/CIP information retrieval sys‐tem as part of their regular classwork. The results have been so positive that the school was chosen to receive Dialog's Excellence in Online Education Award. The award, which includes $1,000's worth of connect time on the Dialog system was presented to the school by Dr. Roger Summit, President of Dialog Information Services.