Discusses the relationship between data and the recipient, and the academic library and its institutional information systems. Examples are drawn from the sciences, including medicine, because of their greater intensity of experimentation and change in information management. New roles for libraries and librarians are highlighted. (EJS)

Reviews evolution of West Germany's national library and information services in three periods--early development of national library services, 1946-48; creation of national library associations, 1946-49; establishment of systematic planning for national library and information services, 1971-83. A comparison of West German services with those of…

The National Academy of Sciences suggests models for biomedical research which include a biology-wide information system with computerized database accessible from a multitude of dimensions. Links could help discover whether toxic chemicals have effects similar to hormones. Commonalities from molecules to ecosystems might restructure available…

Project HERMES is characterized by participation of publishers, industrial and public libraries, and national government, and by use of Teletex for both document ordering and delivery. Provision of three facilities (electronic document ordering and delivery, automatic document delivery, electronic mail) to pilot group of 60 organizations is…

A campus information center is one way to formalize the total user services approach to computing, as a strategy for the distribution and use of new technology with an emphasis on end-user sufficiency. (MSE)

Through a discussion of research on institutions using computer-based planning models, this question is addressed: How does the institutional decision maker make decisions using state-of-the-art computing tools without neglecting nonquantitative realities? (MSE)

Presents analysis of online search patterns within user searching sessions of National Library of Medicine ELHILL system and examines user search patterns on the CATLINE database. Data previously analyzed on MEDLINE database for same period is used to compare the performance parameters of different databases within the same information system.…

Reports on axiomatic approach to systems design that has emanated from documentation work in field of chemistry and closely related disciplines. It is based on five axioms: definability, order, sufficient degree of order, representational predictability, and representational fidelity. Mandatory indexing is discussed; a glossary is appended. (106…

Important features of local area networks (LAN) are reviewed, and several microcomputer LANs are described (ARCnet, Hinet, ShareNet, Ethernet, Omninet, PLAN 4000). Results of survey of 10 libraries using or planning to use a microcomputer LAN and considerations in choosing a LAN are reported. Forty-one references are cited. (EJS)

Summarizes difficulties in creating formal bibliographic citations to public access machine-readable documents (PAMD): no established format for PAMD references in tradition of scholarly writing; structure of computer conferencing results in authors using language different from that used in written communications; information storage problems of…

In 1975, Unesco's Computerized Documentation System was combined with Integrated Set of Information Systems to create a comprehensive collection of programs for input, management, and output. The system is being used to support an Integrated Documentation Network within Unesco and micro and minicomputer versions are soon to be released.…

Description of impact of various technological trends on Canadian special libraries provides brief descriptions of innovative techniques and services developed to meet the challenges. Access to information, "qualitization" of output, support for nodal executive, training function, integration of information flows, charging for…

Thoughts on planning, from the perspective of managers/administrators are presented. Eleven steps of the planning process are identified: statement of objective, proposal outline, management approval, organization, outline of plan, organization of data, evaluation of data, formulation of conclusions, review of draft plan, preparation of plan, and…

Suggests new method of external distribution called tree partitioning that involves use of binary tree to split incoming file into successively smaller partitions for internal sorting. Number of disc accesses during a tree-partitioning sort were calculated in simulation using files extracted from British National Bibliography catalog files. (19…

Examines two primary roles played by natural language processing in storage and retrieval of information and outlines organization of natural language interface for data retrieval (question-answering system) and approaches being taken to text analysis. Research issues in computational linguistics and interactive knowledge acquisition are…