The UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is a body set up by Royal Charter for the promotion of social science research. In August 1985, Council established a major Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT) to examine the important and pervasive long-term societal...

The information profession owes much to Daniel Bell and his well‐publicised speculations in the 1970s about the future post‐industrial, or information society. People working in such long‐established and well settled sectors of society as education, libraries, printing, consultancy,...