As demands on libraries continue to grow, outpacing budget increases, more librarians are forced to make difficult decisions about what materials and services stay and go. Charles R. McClure has written that many librarians use an "adhocracy" method to make these decisions, relying on no data or simple aggregates in determining a course of action.…

Competitive Intelligence (CI) has become an attractive concept for Library and Information Science professionals, as information and research functions have become commoditized by end users, and financial, competitive, and performance pressures increase the need to demonstrate value. In the current competitive and cost-cutting environment,…

Academic librarians need to learn how people learn, what they want to learn about, how the whole man is put together and how he functions. The most important thing about a library is not how it is organized but why it exists. (Author)

A potent tool for librarians and citizens seeking information from the Government. Author)

A proposal for raising the reference quotient in large research libraries through instant classification is presented. (Author)

Summarizes use statistics for the first year of search activity for the Kansas City Libraries Metropolitan Information Network (MINET). Included are databases searched, types of participating libraries, patron status, search systems used, charges, nonpaid searches, and referrals. (SW)

Reviews research findings on the effects of user fees in online searching, and concludes that charging does discourage use of computerized retrieval systems. It is recommended that alternatives to direct user fees be sought whenever possible. (SW)

Knowledge management (KM) has risen out of organizational downsizing and technology innovation and is an attempt to cope with the information explosion and to capitalize on increased knowledge in the workplace. This article examines the emergence of KM, business world variations on its concepts, the role of and opportunities for librarians, and…

The concept of information utility'' (an extensive super information system) presents a challenge to librarians. Philosophies and operations must evolve to insure the librarians' position as the information specialist capable of bringing order to the chaos of the information explosion. (Author/DH)

Ten thousand students tell what's wrong (and what's right) about their school and public libraries. (Author)

Patrons of an engineering library have technical requirements and idiosyncracies which should be considered by library planners. The results of a survey made by the Mitre Corp. are discussed. (DH)

Discusses results of a California Library Association study that investigated library employees' salaries as compared to salaries of employees in comparable public jobs. Highlights include reasons for unfair library employee compensation; comparisons of support staff supervisor salaries and executive salaries; and how to use the data to improve…

Advocates an American Declaration for the information age to guide development of the information industry. The information revolution is discussed in terms of technological advancement, copyright issues, international policy, and telecommunications. Information is compared to money as a universal commodity. (SW)

This essay illustrates a technique for reducing the risks of capital investment decisions involving considerable sums for advanced technologies by considering its application to a problem that arises frequently in selection of automated library systems. Incomplete information, using available information, selecting a system, and consultants are…

Discusses the librarian's role in bringing about an equilibrium between private and public information interests that serves both information owners and the public, and comments on copyright law, libraries as managers of copyrighted property, access versus ownership, the library advantage in document delivery, the value of copyright, and creating…