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The purpose of this paper is to refer to a current discussion on the effectiveness and efficiency of Bielefeld University Library and concentrates on requirements and conditions of implementing customer intelligence in academic libraries. Moreover, a conceptual framework for a library management information system based on a data warehouse that links external and internal data to support strategic planning processes is introduced.

Content‐related and technical aspects of customer intelligence in academic libraries are outlined and analogies are drawn to commercial enterprises to motivate the conceptual reflections. The paper closes with two examples that demonstrate how multifaceted the data pool for customer intelligence can be in librarianship.

The paper sensitizes to the advantages of systematically generating customer knowledge in academic libraries for strategic planning and customer orientation.

The suggested approach can serve as a basis for the development of data‐based decision support systems focusing on the tracking of the usage of library services and customer preferences over time.

Up to now the discussion of customer intelligence as a foundation of strategic planning in academic libraries has been almost a blank space in the literature. The paper contributes to fill this gap.

To share with readers the issues of an international conference.Design/methodology/approach – A brief review of the conference held in Germany, 7‐9 February 2006.

The conference focused on the future of information services in the digital world. Speakers from eight countries discussed joint strategies and transnational networks for academic libraries, innovative information services, and future challenges for academic libraries. Three hands‐on workshops reported on current projects in the fields of long‐term archiving, institutional repositories and marketing approaches in the library context.

Will be of interest to library and information professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to share with readers the issues of the 9th International Bielefeld Conference.

This is a descriptive report.

The conference discussed essential current and future developments towards enhanced libraries and information infrastructures meeting the emerging demands of eScience and eLearning.

Will be of interest to library and information professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether PDF formats are appropriate for long‐term digital archiving.

The approach takes the form of examining how well PDF's capabilities fit eReader devices that future scholars may use in addition to or instead of paper print‐outs.

Fixity is the advantage that PDF offers for archiving, while its alternatives generally offer greater flexibility for eReader devices. The question for long‐term digital archiving is whether fixity or flexibility best suits the interests of future readers?

PDF is widely accepted as a digital archiving format and PDF documents are found in virtually every repository. There has, however, been little discussion as to whether the fixed format is not in fact a long‐term disadvantage.

This study aims to examine how contractual mechanisms, trust and ethical levels impact opportunism in marketing channel relationships between manufacturers and distributors. Because the type of interactions, short-term or transaction-based vs long-term or relation-based, may also affect the level of opportunism, the study includes two scenarios to assess the impact of interaction type.

Survey data from 145 distributors were collected with 69 being transaction-based and 75 being relation-based interactions.

The sole use for transaction-based and relation-based interactions is not a significant deterrent for opportunistic behavior by a distributor. Ethical level is negatively related to opportunism in transaction-based interactions, perhaps because of calculative commitment. Trust positively moderates the relationship between contractual enforcement and opportunism in transaction-based interactions. Under relation-based interactions, the opposite occurs as trust reduces contractual enforcement efforts, and thus, opportunism is reduced as well. Ethical level negatively moderates the relationship between contractual enforcement and opportunism in transactional and relational based interactions.

Researchers have called for a more holistic approach to better understand phenomena. This study addressed that call by being the first to include contracts, trust, ethical level and opportunism within the context of the transaction and relation-based interactions between a manufacturer and a distributor. Contractual enforcement is not a significant deterrent of opportunism for transactional or relational interactions. Trust is negatively related to opportunism only in transaction-based interactions; perhaps, the threshold for acting opportunistically may be lower because of the short-term nature of the interaction. The ethical level is negatively related to opportunism in transaction and relational interactions.

The attempt to establish a common European framework for core platforms' duties and responsibilities toward other actors in the digital environment is at the core of the recent scholarly debate surrounding the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal. In particular, the everlasting juxtaposition between the “data power” – as emerging from recent cases (Section 2) – that dominant tech companies enjoy and the concept of consumer sovereignty (Section 3) lies at the core of the proposal's attempt to identify digital core platforms as market gatekeepers. Accordingly, this chapter critically investigates the divide between power imbalance and consumer sovereignty in light of the architecture designed by the DMA, with a specific focus on its effectiveness in identifying gatekeepers' power drivers (Section 4). After highlighting the main critical aspects of the pertinent rules, opportunities for fruitful developments are then identified through the reframing of some of the notions considered in the proposal, and namely the role of “lock-in” effects and “data accumulation” (Section 5). Lastly, this chapter suggests that the DMA advancements – while desirable – are bound to be fragmentary in the absence of a wider appraisal of the nature of data power imbalance dynamics in the modern digital markets (Section 6).