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The phrase “digital divide” has been applied to the gap that exists in most countries between those with ready access to the tools of information and communication technologies, and the knowledge that they provide access to, and those without such access or skills. This may be because of socio‐economic factors, geographical factors, educational, attitudinal and generational factors, or it may be through physical disabilities. A further gap between the developed and underdeveloped world in the uptake of technology is evident within the global community, and may be of even greater significance. The paper examines a number of these issues at the national level in the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand, looking for evidence of the “digital divide”, assessing factors that contribute to it, and evaluating strategies that can help reduce it. The relevance of these strategies to developing countries, and strategies for reducing the international digital divide are also explored.

The emergence of digital government and the requirement for citizens to exchange information with government online have raised a number of issues related to personal information held by government. These include questions about the confidence of citizens concerning the security and privacy of information they provide to government, on‐ or offline, and whether different cultural attitudes to issues such as personal identity might impact on citizens' attitudes towards privacy. This paper aims to investigate these issues.

This paper reports and comments on the experiences and concerns of citizens in both New Zealand and Japan, based on focus groups and interviews. The New Zealand research included indigenous Maori, immigrant Pacific Islands groups and other ethnic communities.

Although all groups had concerns about information privacy, the nature of these concerns varied among the different groups interviewed and among individuals. Explanations of the attitudes and perceptions made in each group reflect cultural values and concepts of personal identity, and illustrate the importance of being aware of the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures.

The research was based on a number of small studies, with limited numbers of participants. The findings would be strengthened by expanding the research to include larger numbers of participants.

The findings are significant to the development of policies for securing the confidentiality of citizens in the way government handles personal information in the online environment and in the ways in which these policies are communicated to citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Focus/Values/Purpose Matrix, first presented at the 2nd Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement which attempts to define three significant factors that contribute to the extent to which a library and information service organisation has a “culture of assessment” that informs its strategic planning, allocation of resources, and the use it makes of evaluation in these activities.

The underlying assumption is that the ability of a library to understand customer requirements, and deliver high quality service is influenced by its commitment to a “culture of assessment”. This assumption, and the matrix itself have been tested empirically, and positive placement on each of the axes was shown to correlate with an enhanced ability to deliver customer satisfaction, as assessed by a SERVQUAL type gap analysis. In that research each organisation's placement on the axes was assessed using documentary evidence and interview data from each library. An attempt to determine placement on the axes using survey data was unsuccessful. Other instruments to evaluate an organisation's culture of assessment have been developed, but they are developed from a management perspective, and take a top‐down approach to organisational culture.

The study finds that a new survey instrument is being developed and tested, that attempts to translate the theoretical model of the matrix into a workable instrument which would measure these factors in a wider range of institutions, using an approach that is more integrated with the perspectives of staff at all organisational levels on the understanding that a culture of assessment must permeate all staff levels to be translated into service quality.

The newly developed instrument is intended to be administered to an organisation's staff, and attempts to capture the views, practice and culture of the organisation using statements about the personal and organisational value placed on evaluation, and knowledge of activities that demonstrate that measurement is incorporated into planning procedures. The instrument, which has been developed through a series of focus groups, and testing in six university libraries, and which has inbuilt checks for construct validity, and consistency, is now ready for testing in a larger range of libraries, and correlating with scores of customer satisfaction.

There are two main centres of library and information science (LIS) research in New Zealand, the Department of Library and Information Studies, at Victoria University of Wellington, and the National Library of New Zealand. They each have a different purpose, but each in its way contributes to a growing body of New Zealand LIS research which is available to inform managers and policy makers locally, and which is finding a wider audience in the international literature. Provides a brief overview of LIS research in New Zealand and discusses early difficulties in developing a research base in New Zealand, recent and current projects in both institutions, and some of the unique features of New Zealand research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development of institutional repositories in New Zealand, exploring factors affecting the adoption and success of institutional repositories from the perspective of the library managers who established them, and from the perspective of the academic community.

Data from a series of interviews with library managers are compared with the findings from a randomised national survey of academics.

The responses of the library managers suggest that they are positive about the value of their institutional repository, and the progress made towards recruiting content for it. Data from the survey of academics indicate that academics have been slow to embrace the concept of institutional repositories, and show little interest in using repositories for increasing the accessibility of their own work, or to access the work of others. The number of deposits remains low, mirroring patterns throughout the world, and subject or disciplinary repositories appear to have greater value to the academic community.

The future long‐term sustainability of institutional repositories depends on gaining a stronger commitment from the academic community, or developing different goals, against which their success might be measured.

The study is the first random survey of academic staff across all disciplines, and an entire country, and the findings have a very high level of generalisability.

New technologies in reference and information work place increasing demands on reference staff to acquire skills with the technology itself, to develop and evaluate new services and sources, and to train users in their optimal use. These demands for new skills create training needs among staff offering the services. This paper reports on a survey carried out in libraries in Guangzhou and Wellington that investigated the use of technology to provide information services in these libraries, the training that had been provided and areas where libraries felt there were still unmet needs for training. Although Chinese libraries were using a similar range of technologies, training programmes and needs varied between Chinese and New Zealand libraries.

The standard approach adopted in library networking or partnership models is neither developmental nor evolutionary, yet development and evolution are keys to robust, contextually responsive partnerships. Using a set of knowledge models first proposed by Owen and Wiercx, this paper argues for a new approach to the modelling of networks in which libraries enter at one point and then move along a continuum, ideally ending in an advanced, integrated knowledge environment model. There is limited evidence that some library consortia in Asia are moving in this direction, but for the most part Asian consortia and networks are of the traditional, static variety.