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The provision of current awareness to a community of customers is generally accepted as highly desirable. The service becomes even more valuable when it includes journals held within the customers’ own library. Describes a pilot programme conducted at the Rodgers Library for Science and Engineering at the University of Alabama, September 1995 to May 1996. An electronically‐accessed table of contents service was distributed to a group of faculty members in the Department of Chemistry. ContentsFirst database from OCLC was electronically accessed and delivered directly to the E‐mail address of target users. The objective was to examine how useful an electronic‐based current awareness service would be to faculty users and how the service might enhance the library’s overall role in facilitating the communication of information among researchers. The survey evaluation conducted at the end indicated that provision of table of contents electronically was a highly valuable library service.

For some months the central library of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, a research‐based pharmaceutical company in Germany, has been disseminating tables of contents in electronic form. These electronic tables of contents are generated from the current scientific journal literature. At present the library supplies contents pages of roughly 440 journals to 240 internal clients. This service has been designed as a means of rapid distribution of individually tailored information from the topical scientific literature. The tables of contents are delivered to the clients' electronic mailboxes via the electronic mail system. We describe the situation before the introduction of this service, the motives for switching to this service, and the librarian and technical work necessary in the preliminary stages. Moreover, the paper shows the realisation of the project, the problems occurring during the phase of introduction and the acceptance by the users.

The importance of adequate dietary intake of essential minerals for the maintenance of optimal health and growth in humans is well recognized. Accordingly, food composition tables are used for evaluating nutrient adequacy and for nutritional policy making. As in Iran there is no up‐to‐date national food composition table, usually data of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are used. However, because of environmental and genetic differences, the applicability of this information in Iran had been questioned. Hence, the purpose of the present study is to analyze micronutrients content of different food items.

In total, 85 samples of 17 different food items were chosen for this study. The iron, phosphorus, calcium and zinc contents of food items were measured using spectrophotometric method and the values were compared with the data of USDA food composition table.

There were differences between the micronutrient content of Iranian food items when compared with USDA values. The greatest variation was observed in the case of calcium content for which 58.82 percent of products had appreciable differences followed by iron (47.17 percent), phosphorus (47.05 percent) and zinc (35.29 percent). Given these differences, caution must be taken in using data from other countries tables especially in the case of evaluating nutrient adequacy and nutritional policy making.

This paper is believed to be the only one which compared some mineral content of Iranian food items with USDA food composition table as a most commonly used table in Iran.

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (national library of The Netherlands, KB), in a joint project with the Library of the Catholic University of Brabant in Tilburg (KUB) and Pica (Dutch Centre for Library Automation), is creating a database with tables of contents of current periodicals. The information is scanned from the table of contents of the original periodical issue and converted by an OCR program into an ASCII file. This file is manually corrected and marked with tags. Subsequently an input file is created for the conversion that strips off all noise and creates a structured record. This record is the input for the database that will be presented as part of the OPAC to the library users. Sub‐projects are the research into the possibilities for the creation of a distributed database for nationwide use and a comparison of scanning and OCR techniques with manual input. When the outcome of the project is satisfactory the Online Contents database will be made operational for the KB on a regular basis. There are also plans for a national database, with nationwide input.

This paper aims to assess the suitability of cement combination containing CEM I, fly ash, silica fume and metakaolin for durability design against carbonation-induced corrosion in concrete.

Cube compressive strengths at 28 days and accelerated carbonation depths at 28 days and at various exposure ages were determined at the water/cement ratios of 0.35, 0.50 and 0.65. To assess their suitability for carbonation-induced corrosion, the material costs and embodied carbon dioxide (eCO₂) contents of the concretes at equivalent performance were compared.

Cement combination concretes achieved equal carbonation resistance with CEM I at higher compressive strengths, lower water/cement ratios and higher cement contents. The comparison of the concretes, at equivalent performance, based on the carbonation-induced corrosion exposure classes XC3 and XC4 (Table A.4 of BS 8500-1), shows that ternary and more binary cement concretes have lower costs and eCO₂ contents than those recommended in Table A.6 of BS 8500-1.

This analysis is limited to a working life of 50 years. Further research is needed to verify the suitability of the cement combinations for a working life of 100 years and for the other aspects of durability design covered in BS 8500.

Cement combination concretes have lower eCO₂ content. Hence, when they are cheaper than CEM I concrete at equivalent performance, they would make concrete construction more economic and environmentally compatible.

This research suggests the inclusion of metakaolin and ternary cement combination concretes in BS 8500 for durability design against carbonation-induced corrosion.

Many small libraries do not have the resources to build a holdings database. Thanks to the avail‐ability of affordable scanners and improved OCR software, a new approach for creating an online database is possible. This database is filled through a series of stages. First, the book information and table of contents pages are scanned and converted to text using OCR software. Then, a computer program is used to extract as much information as possible, with a human making corrections and supplying missing information. Finally, the information, which consists of the title, author, ISBN, publication year, call number and other relevant information for books, as well as the entire table of contents, is stored and added to an Ovid database.

A research project is reported in which techniques for the automatic classification of book material were investigated. Attention was focussed on three fundamental issues, namely: the computer‐based surrogation of monographic material, the clustering of book surrogates on the basis of content association, and the evaluation of the resultant classifications. A test collection of 250 books, which was assembled on behalf of the project, is described together with its surrogation by means of the complete back‐of‐the‐book index, table of contents, title and Dewey classification code(s) of each volume. Some properties of hierarchic and non‐hierarchic automatic classifications of the test collection are discussed, followed by their evaluation with reference to a small set of queries and relevance judgements. Finally, a less formal evaluation of the classifications in terms of the logical appeal of the cluster membership is reported. The work has shown that, on a small experimental scale and in the context of the test data used, automatic classifications of book material represented by index list can be produced which are superior, on the basis of a generalized measure of effectiveness, to a conventional library classification of the same material.

Historically, libraries have always included special features in their catalogs to meet local needs. This trend has changed over the years as cataloging standards have been developed and accepted. The sheer volume of materials and the rising costs of operations have also curtailed the customizing of local records. However, the desirability of enhancing local records has been readdressed at Carnegie Mellon University. It has undertaken an experimental project to enhance catalog records for new books that meet defined criteria: for example, the books contain “citable” references in the table of contents; chapter titles, while not separately citable, do contain additional useful information; and exhibition catalogs cover 25 or fewer artists. The criteria for and process of enhancing records are discussed, and sample screen displays are illustrated.