Information overload is by no means a new concept, but has come to prominence during the last decade. This paper reviews the nature and causes of overload, and considers possible solutions, both organisational and technical, and its relevance to the information professional.

At the heart of any discussion of the information sciences, at least when this discussion is held in the English language, lies the problem of the variant, and shifting, set of concepts and meanings of the terms ‘library’ and ‘information’. The term ‘information’, in particular, has...