Research, relativity and relevance : can universal truths answer local questions

It is a commonplace that the internet has led to a globalisation of informatics and that this has had beneficial effects in terms of standards and interoperability. However this necessary harmonisation has also led to a growing understanding that this positive trend has an in-built assumption that "one size fits all". The paper explores the importance of local and national research in addressing global issues and the appropriateness of local solutions and applications. It concludes that federal and collegial solutions are to be preferred to imperial solutions

Waiting for the barbarians : seeking solutions or awaiting answers?

Cavafy's (1961) famous poem describes the paralysis induced when waiting for an event that never happens, finding distraction in other things while expecting imminent cataclysm. Libraries have perhaps been guilty of this in recent years, joining the chorus bemoaning the imminent arrival of the digital barbarians and undertaking a whole series of avoidance tactics which make libraries ever more efficient but ever less relevant. Like Cavafy's senators, libraries have prepared themselves, decked themselves in finery but have waited for the future to come to them rather than gone out to engage with it

Beyond CD-ROM : wider horizons in the provision of electronic information

The availability of information across the networks is explored and described, along with plans for the navigation and filtering tools which will promote access to them. Issues of funding of datasets, end-user training, document delivery, the marginalization of the traditional library and the Follett Committee Review of Library Provision in Higher Education are explored. The current level of investment in CD-ROM is discussed, as well as the possibilities and limitations of the technology. The two technologies are compared and contrasted and the particular importance of services free at the point of use stressed

Content and services issues for digital libraries

Describes the neglected area of e-collection building, on the taxonomy of e-collections and on the possible range of online services

An awfully big adventure : Strathclyde's digital library plan

Describes how the University of Strathclyde is choosing to give priority to e-content and services instead of a new building

Lightning rod or seismograph? The acid test for librarians

Contends that librarians can shape their future rather than just record and manage what has already happened. The author believes that we must work to persuade our organisations that we are producers and not just consumers of information and that in making that argument we will assert that our professional skills, although in need of review and re-presentation, remain of critical value to the development of an information society. This is as true of digital libraries as paper libraries

Diary of a revolution

Recounts attending a conference in Moscow during the overthrow of Gorbacho

The changing roles and identities of library and information services staff

A review of the changing roles of library, IT and e-learning staff from 1960 to date. Examines convergence and blurring of roles and what constitutes professional identity

Sink or swim: digital dilemma in higher education

Describes the challenges facing universities and their libraries and explores how they might respond to the emerging digital world

Resource sharing and hybrid libraries: the MALIBU Project

The British electronic libraries programme has funded four projects to develop thinking on so-called hybrid libraries and one of these is MALIBU (Modernising Academic Libraries in British Universities), based at King's College London. Working with the libraries of Oxford and Southampton Universities it will take a very rich set of humanities resources from archives and incunabula to digital products and networked resources and create a seamless single access point to all the available resources. It will also explore how strategies can be developed to make resources available locally as operational services rather than unreliably over the Internet. It does not set out to create its own new tools but rather to find ways of integrating tools already in existence or being developed