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Somehow, without loading up on games or owning a sound card, the author has 28 CD‐ROMs at home, with more on the way. How did all these discs get there and what do they say (if anything) about the CD‐ROM marketplace? When are CD‐ROMs marvelous new publishing media, when are they essentially compact diskette replacements, and when are they wastes of good polycarbonate? The author goes through his motley collection, noting some highlights and some messy situations. After all this grumbling, the author adds notes on the personal computing literature for April through September 1994.

At its regular meeting on April 25, the OCLC Board of Trustees and OCLC President Rowland C. W. Brown announced that Mr. Brown will relinquish his responsibilities as president and chief executive officer of OCLC during the coming year.

ibiblio is a digital library hosted at the University of North Carolina‐Chapel Hill that manages to be both a repository for cultural information and a resource for community building. The project has existed in many forms since the beginning of the web, and has maintained a core commitment to open source software and tools. ibiblio's maintainers have continually expanded the project's offerings in response to the availability of new technologies and the support of financial and technological partners. Their newest project is an open source weblog development and distribution system.

Copyright or wrong The appointment of a man with a legal rather than a scientific background as the new Director of Chemical Abstracts Service (see Robert J. Massie in the ‘People’ section below) seems appropriate at a time when copyright issues are becoming increasingly central to the business of information.

Of the 88 public libraries responding to one 1982 survey, twelve (or 13.6 percent) had at least one “public access” microcomputer and ten (or 11.4 percent) planned on getting one “in the very near future.” From all indications, things have escalated since then. Here in Illinois, the first public access “Users Group” for librarians was created. This phenomenon has been fueled by the belief that computers are becoming so commonplace that learning how to use them is almost as important as learning how to read and write.

Current practice when specifying and developing manufacturing software leads to enterprise systems that are difficult to change. With the purpose of improving current practice a model‐driven, component‐based approach to engineering change capable manufacturing systems is described. Application of the approach is supported by a number of proof‐of‐concept system design and construction environments. Each environment organises the use of modelling tools that function to formally capture and apply the results of systems engineering activities carried out by members of project teams. In this way the development of multi‐perspective enterprise (enterprise: a group of organisations sharing a set of goals and objectives to offer products, services or both (ISO 14258)) models is enabled in a computer executable form and means are provided to reconfigure manufacturing systems by using the models to change the way that system components interoperate. Collectively the proof‐of‐concept environments have demonstrated a capability to engineer a variety of types of manufacturing system and by so doing implement a system structure that accommodates rather than inhibits subsequent change, even where that change is of an unforeseen nature.

The Open Source Software movement has much to offer the library community. But can it survive the onslaught of patent applications?

Information technology (IT) has been hailed as a great time and paper saver. How far is this true? Are you benefiting as much as you could from the computer on your desk or are you wasting time learning how to use complex software when it would be more cost‐effective to buy in expertise? This paper looks at what, for some, may be novel ways of using a PC and indicates areas where computer use may not be beneficial. The article is geared towards special libraries, but may have wider applications.

Setting up an SC350 may look complicated at first, but with patience, some computer background, and support from knowledgeable contacts, creating a fully operational SC350 workstation does not have to be a nerve‐wracking experience. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work with a very helpful staff at OCLC and SUNY OCLC. The following could be considered a report on “how we did it” or could be useful information for the library preparing for or considering using SC350. Once the technicians arrive with the hardware, you are faced with assembling an M300 terminal, CRT, a Tallgrass hard disk drive, an unattached modem, and a printer. You are supplied with several lengthy manuals, and have virtually very little idea of how to proceed. The technicians will unpack and hook‐up the following items: the disk drive and CRT. They will further assist you by installing your M300 software on floppy disks. They are very polite, will wish you luck, and leave. But what about the modem, hard disk, and printer? To finish the job at hand, it is important to read through the manuals and sort through the remaining unpacked materials in order to prepare a successful gameplan.

OPAC Network in Europe — ONE — is a project which aims to provide users with better ways to access library OPACs and national catalogues and which will stimulate and facilitate interworking between libraries in Europe. The project is based on the use of the SR/Z39.50 standards which enable users to search widely different computer systems across networks and offer end‐users the promise of greater ease of use through a solution to the proliferation of different user interfaces to library catalogues.