The thirtieth anniversary of the first e‐mail was celebrated recently, but no one knows the exact date or what the original message was. This lack of certainty is typical of research on e‐mail – there is now a substantial body of knowledge, but little attempt has been made to co‐ordinate...

Numbering and addressing are key features of telecommunications: without them, the Global Information Society cannot exist. As the demand for new, and more innovative, services grows and the world moves towards deregulation and competition, so the pressure on numbering space increases. This...

‘Plain English’, ‘simple language’ and ‘good style’ are frequently taken for granted. Yet, easily as such epithets may come to us, they, nevertheless, conceal issues concerning the use of language which are unlikely ever to be resolved in a satisfactory manner. The quotation from...

A summary of the report of the Unesco meeting of experts on the problems and strategies of incorporating the social sciences into the world science information system (UNISIST) is given, followed by discussion of the implications for social scientists, as users of information services, of some...