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The thirtieth anniversary of the first e‐mail was celebrated recently, but no one knows the exact date or what the original message was. This lack of certainty is typical of research on e‐mail – there is now a substantial body of knowledge, but little attempt has been made to co‐ordinate it. This article looks at the origins and features of e‐mail and brings together findings on such issues as information overload, aggression and unsolicited commercial e‐mail (“spam”). Information storage and retrieval issues are covered, as are the results of user‐impact studies. The article identifies scope for further research on human‐computer interaction.

Numbering and addressing are key features of telecommunications: without them, the Global Information Society cannot exist. As the demand for new, and more innovative, services grows and the world moves towards deregulation and competition, so the pressure on numbering space increases. This article looks at basic numbering concepts and the role played by numbering in information and telecommunication policy.

A summary of the report of the Unesco meeting of experts on the problems and strategies of incorporating the social sciences into the world science information system (UNISIST) is given, followed by discussion of the implications for social scientists, as users of information services, of some of the proposals put forward at that meeting. In particular, the problems involved in standardizing terminology for thesauri and other bibliographical facilities, and the advantages which are likely to be derived from common standards of data collection are discussed.

‘Plain English’, ‘simple language’ and ‘good style’ are frequently taken for granted. Yet, easily as such epithets may come to us, they, nevertheless, conceal issues concerning the use of language which are unlikely ever to be resolved in a satisfactory manner. The quotation from Through the Looking Glass illustrates one of the most enduring of these. Alice, perhaps because she is a child, supports the conservatives: strict rule‐followers who believe that English words have fixed and invariable meanings. Into this category also come those who hope to purge our language of foreign (especially American) influences, much like those who wish to eliminate all traces of ‘franglais’ from the French language. Humpty Dumpty represents the liberals—those who feel that words can change their meanings according to circumstances. This allows him to close the argument by claiming that: ‘I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.’

DOCUMENTATION STANDARDS The British Standards Institution announces the publication of two standards on Information and Documentation which are implementations of International Standards Organization standards. BS ISO 9230:1991 is Information and Documentation — Determination of Price Indexes for Books and Serials Purchased by Libraries, ISBN 0–580–20260–7, 8pp. It specifies a system for the determination of price indexes for books and serials in printed form as purchased by libraries and intended for use by the library community, primarily for the production of national price indexes to help them control the amount of funding available for acquisition. It was created because of practical difficulties met in applying indexes of non‐library origin to library management, and to take account of the fact that the international nature of libraries involves dealing with a number of countries and currencies. References are made to other relevant international standards. The price is £26.50 (£13.25 to BSI subscribing members).

When INFROSS began in the autumn of 1967, although a large number of studies had been conducted into the requirements of scientists for information, very little had been done in the field of social science information. There are a number of possible reasons for this. Social scientists, faced with a much smaller total volume of information, were much less information‐conscious and less inclined to seek for solutions. There are very few specialist libraries in the social sciences, and few librarians were therefore confronted with social scientists' information needs in the same way as librarians in scientific libraries were confronted with users and their problems. Finally, until OSTI came along there was little in the way of funds to support this kind of research. This almost total absence of previous research had its disadvantages and advantages. There were very few clues to guide us, and we were therefore working to a certain extent in the dark. On the other hand, we had a clean and open field uncorrupted by confusing and non‐comparable studies. There is something to be said for being one of the first in a field. (For an extended review of relevant work previously carried out, Michael Brittain's book should be consulted.)

MY SELF‐RESTRAINT in refraining until thus far through the year from mention of the game of cricket is not, I'm afraid, due to a waning of interest with the onset of old age (it's my birthday next week), but to a ripe contentment with the Ashes victory in Australia during the winter, plus the realisation that cricket is hardly a suitable subject for discussion in the arctic weather conditions we have been experiencing during the first three months of 1979.