The account of illuminative evaluation contributed by Colin Harris to the October 1977 issue of Aslib Proceedings was timely. Too little attention is usually paid to the effects of new information services or changes in systems. Evaluation will be a central concern of the next stage of Project...

In a previous article in Aslib proceedings we published an outline of our proposed evaluation programme. This account describes our experience of illuminative evaluation in assessing a series of information service innovations over the past two years.

Project INISS is the first major investigation of the information needs of social services staff in this country. This paper describes the origins of the project, the method employed in the first phase of the study, some of the findings, and implications for information services in these...

The previous reports in this series described the data collection phases of Project INISS, in which structured observation and interviewing were the basic methods used. When this work was completed the Project moved into its ‘action’ phase, in which a number of innovations in information...

‘A peculiarity of the study of (Information Science) is its lack of demarcations: sooner or later the student of (Information Science) finds himself wandering into fields that are occupied by other sciences. The practical difficulty of drawing a dividing‐line between the legitimate scope of...

In this country local authorities perform many tasks in society, from keeping an eye on the quality of goods, through the maintenance of parks and other amenities, to the provision of basic services in education and social welfare. In doing all of this, those concerned get very little in the way...

China is moving towards a new form of economic structure — one based upon a market economy with all of the problems associated with that mode of organization. The stresses associated with major economic change are being felt already and it is questionable whether the society can derive the...

The benefits of an objective method of describing beef carcasses are being investigated through trials at several Australian abattoirs. This paper reports the results of an attitudinal study carried out with the beef retailers who trade with one of these abattoirs. Most retailers surveyed were...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to respond to Bawden's review of Wilson's 1981 paper, “On user studies and information needs”. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reflects on the context of the original paper, and on subsequent developments. Findings – The paper comments on...

There is some confusion in the literature with regard to the use of the terms ‘permuted’, ‘rotated’, ‘cycled’.