What the large users expect from secondary services producers

If you were a scholar at Merton College, Oxford, in mediaeval times, then for your BA degree you read the books down one side of the College Library and for your MA, the books on the other side. This was no mean task but those who accomplished it, had read virtually all the books that mattered. How different from today! The scholars of today suffer from the frustration described by the cliché ‘information explosion’. Both the providers of secondary services and information units work to cure this frustration. However, from the morass, some messages can be distilled.