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The UK Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) was a major research and development programme funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher education funding councils. One part of its work was concerned with document delivery, and several projects had this topic either as an explicit focus or as a necessary component. Reviews these projects, assessing the contribution of each one to UK document delivery services in academic libraries.

Document delivery is a fast‐changing practice, being highly subject to economic and technological developments. The FIDDO project, supported by the UK Electronic Libraries Programme, has as a major objective to supply relevant and up‐to‐date information to library managers in this dynamic field. This review of Websites concerned with document delivery aims to contribute to that objective. The review identifies a selection of the more important Websites that might be used by a library manager, and supplies a review of each from both practitioner and academic perspectives.The Websites reviewed include indexes of document suppliers, reports of research projects, system developments and national initiatives, and professional sites. The scope of the review is worldwide, although a specific effort has been made to include sites based outside the USA.

Five years ago the problems being addressed by major educational resources were how to locate and structure a burgeoning universe of Web sites in order to serve their subject and professional communities with useful and relevant content. Today, new challenges, demands and opportunities are emerging: the linking of content with community, static information with dynamic news. Describes the evolution of three educational resources in the social sciences (SOSIG, Biz/Ed and Regard) and their use of personal profiling, distributed contributions and RSS news channels to serve and gather information. Examines the issues that arise from changing user bases and technologies, sustainability and the need for collaboration, data protection and privacy concerns. Analyses the tensions these and other services face as they move toward a model that links the static with the dynamic, content with community.

Many and varied information sources are used by researchers and managers across sectors relevant to public policy development. When aggregated, these sources can be described in terms of sector‐specific information landscapes. This paper describes results from a survey that investigated such landscapes and relates them to the working practices of those for whom they were relevant. This is achieved through the use of co‐word or co‐term analysis, a technique derived from actor‐network theory. This technique allows for the production of graphic plots of normalised free text term pairs, which take into account inclusiveness. The results suggest that knowledge communities can be identified by this technique.

The paper aims to describe recent moves to establish a UK electronic thesis service. The existing arrangements for access to UK doctoral theses are not seen as ideal or sustainable. A range of stakeholders have come together in recent years to invest in an alternative. The resulting service model is one that is relevant to higher education across the UK and beyond.

The EThOS service model is a partnership between the British Library as the service provider and UK universities, and includes technical, legal, business and operational aspects. It has been achieved by a series of development projects undertaken since 2002, culminating now in the impending transition from prototype to live service.

The EThOS service model includes a range of partnership options to suit the varied requirements of UK higher education institutions. The main ambition of the model is to make electronic theses available open access via a financially viable and sustainable model. The core of the model is a “central hub”, offering discovery, digitisation and preservation functions, working with institutions, in part via their institutional repositories.

It is hoped that most UK higher education institutions will sign up for EThOS and benefit from this shift to both electronic theses and open access. Many have already indicated that they will do so.

The value of the EThOS service is likely to be considerable. Where theses are available open access, their use escalates. EThOS will enable UK theses to be more widely accessed, read, used and cited worldwide. Authors, institutions and the UK all benefit from this.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the national intellectual capital (NIC) of South Africa by making comparisons with Poland and Romania.

Based on a database of an NIC measurement model spanning 2001-2015, this study plotted the development trend of the NIC and its component capitals – human, market, process and renewal capitals. Their correlations with GDP per capita (ppp) (GDP hereinafter) were also presented.

The NIC of South Africa is lower than that of both Poland and Romania. Except for the increase of its human capital together with its GDP, the other capitals have lower relevance. Poland experienced highly correlated growth for its NIC and GDP, shedding light for South Africa. The qualitative findings are also reported.

The IMD database carries South African data only for the African continent. Therefore, this paper cannot cover other countries from the continent.

There are three implications from both the quantitative and qualitative analyses: initiate national transformation from the two core issues of education and health; invite and provide attractive incentives for South African returnees from abroad and members of local private sectors to take part in the national transformation efforts; and learn from the NIC development pattern of Poland and Romania by investing in market capital and process capital as soon as possible for faster results.

The research findings of this paper unveil the root of the social problems in South Africa, including education, health, high unemployment and so on. Suggestions are provided for mid-term and long-term potential solutions.

This paper demonstrates the value of an NIC in the economically successful Poland whose growth and GDP growth occurred at a similar pace.

E‐commerce is big business providing exciting opportunities for library and information professionals. This paper examines the range of options available for libraries and researchers to obtain or access documents electronically. It lists suppliers and discusses selection criteria, both informed by the results of the eLib sponsored FIDDO (Focused Investigation of Document Delivery Options) Project completed in 1999.