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Discusses the voluntary and co‐operative basis of interlibrary lending among libraries in the Netherlands. Outlines the co‐operative development of an automated Union Catalogue and ILL system. Examines the country′s involvement in international work on ILL system and moves towards further co‐operation in international interlending.

In order to test the impact of system and domain knowledge on search behaviour in an online catalogue, an experiment was set up in a university library where students from three specialisation areas performed a number of search tasks in the online catalogue. The subjects differed in the amount of domain and system knowledge. In two sessions the subjects performed searches inside and outside their ‘own’ domain. During the first session all subjects had little system knowledge. After the first session, half of the group received instruction in catalogue use and the other half did not. To observe whether the induced differences in system knowledge had effects on the search performance, a second session was carried out. Subjects' search behaviour was videotaped and their comments recorded (they were encouraged to think aloud). Results show the the amount of system knowledge had a significant effect on search time as well as on the number of search patterns observed. Regarding domain knowledge, only one out of the six analyses concerning search time or the amount of patterns yielded a significant effect. A possible explanation for this result could be the questionable validity of the criteria used to distinguish between known and unknown domains. The difference in knowledge regarding familiar and unfamiliar domains is not as large as had been expected. The notion of end‐users displaying habitual modes of behaviour is given considerable support by the data. This is reflected by the limited number of patterns observed.

The electronic library scene Pica has purchased a controlling interest in ALS (Automated Library Systems) and the two have formed a cooperative alliance. Pica concentrates mainly on the automation of academic libraries and ALS on public libraries, and each will continue to operate as an independent organisation with separate product lines, customer support and other activities. However, by joining together in this way the companies say they can offer a wider range of services, products and R&D, and ‘come to a convergence of new technical developments in order to react faster to new technological trends.’ They also intend to increase their combined market share in Europe — both are strong in the Netherlands and Germany; ALS is a strong UK player and has a growing presence in France, Switzerland and Portugal — and to establish an integrated infrastructure for the libraries to which they give support.

Traces the history of OCLC’s development as an international organization, reviews current activities around the world and describes evolving strategies for globalization of the OCLC co‐operative.

Concentrates on the results of the European Commission funded Electronic Document Interchange between Libraries (EDIL) project. Includes details of the work of the Group on Electronic Interchange (GEDI) on which the project is based, together with a brief description of the partners in the project. The results of the project are that, although the technological solution worked well, there were several outstanding operational and market issues that require resolution before such a system can be used commercially. It will also be necessary to resolve the copyright issues surrounding electronic document delivery.

The purpose of this article is to explain the developments which have led to the award of a UK wide resource sharing service to OCLC/PICA.

Provides a narrative and descriptive approach.

The UnityUK platform comprises three existing integrated software applications. The platform encapsulates the requirements of resource sharing, from discovery through to delivery. More importantly, it offers an end user interface for library borrowers, including the ability to authenticate and request an item from anywhere in the country.

The article provides insights into the current complex and rapidly changing situation for interlending and resource sharing in the UK – particularly in the UK public library sector.

This study attempts to evaluate the effect of the corpus-based inductive teaching approach with multiple academic corpora (PICA, CAEC and Oxford Corpus of Academic English) and conventional deductive teaching approach (i.e., multiple-choice items, filling the gap, matching and underlining) on learning academic collocations by Iranian advanced EFL learners (students learning English as a foreign language).

This is a quasi-experimental, quantitative and qualitative study.

The result showed the experimental group outperformed significantly compared with the control group. The experimental group also shared their perception of the advantages and disadvantages of the corpus-assisted language teaching approach.

Despite growing progress in language pedagogy, methodologies and language curriculum design, there are still many teachers who experience poor performance in their students' vocabulary, whether in comprehension or production. In Iran, for example, even though mandatory English education begins at the age of 13, which is junior and senior high school, students still have serious problems in language production and comprehension when they reach university levels.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by the Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for the articles rests with the British Library Board and opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription for 1984 to VINE is: £23 for UK subscribers, £26 to overseas subscribers (including airmail delivery). Second and subsequent copies to the same address are charged at £14 for UK and £16 for overseas. VINE is available in either paper or microfiche copy and all back issues are available on microfiche.