Art. 1: David Shulenburger,
Scholarly communications is not toxic waste: lessons learned.

The author addresses the ecology of the scholarly communications system. He points to a need of radical improvements in the effectiveness of the system by developing "open access to knowledge," especially, to increasingly more expensive scientific journals. While working to achieve this goal he follows the rule: "First, do no harm." Therefore, he analyses not only the disadvantages, but also the advantages of solutions proposed by the so-called Tempe group, or expressed in the Berlin Declaration. The author argues that it is needed to find compromising solutions that will satisfy the needs of system users, authors and publishers of traditional journals and that will not damage the quality of scientific materials published on-line.

Art. 2: Britta Woldering,
The European Library: an integrated access to European national libraries .

The author presents the principles of TEL (The European Library http://www.europeanlibrary.org), a project that terminated at the end of January 2004. The main goal of TEL was to investigate the possibility of creating a new Europe-wide service that would ensure access to combined resources of European national libraries. The project was partially financed by the European Commission as an accompanying measure of the cultural heritage applications area of the Key Action 3 which forms part of the Information Society Technologies research programme. The project was joined by the Conference of European National Libraries (CENL), national libraries of Finland, Germany, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland and Great Britain, as well as, ICCU, the Italian Central Cataloguing institution.

Art. 3: Dagmara Sawicka,
Entering the European Union through library websites.

The article is an attempt to analyse library websites of state institutions of higher education in terms of their commitment to the promotion of knowledge and information related to the European Union. More than 50 library websites were studied. Unfortunately, the conclusions are quite pessimistic. Only a small number of authors of library services on the Internet, a widely utilised tool of information retrieval, designated some time and space for disseminating knowledge about the EU and Poland's integration with the EU. If this information is disseminated in some way, it appears in the form of links to webpages of other institutions. However, most surprising is a lack of any type of information, including links to it, on library websites of the largest state institutions in Poland.

Art. 4: Agnieszka Joanna Strojek,
Public Information Bulletin on public library websites - findings of initial monitoring.

The article presents a fragment of a broader study investigating the consequences of the social functioning of the Access to Public Information Act. Special attention is given to standard requirements of the Public Information Bulletin (BIP). In order to collect information on the state of library BIPs, in April 2004, the author monitored library websites. The monitoring studied internet services of municipal libraries. It was conducted in two stages. The first stage aimed to determine whether the existing websites under study are consistent with the formal structure suggested by the act, while the second stage surveyed the information content of the existing public library BIPs.

Art. 5: Anna Wołodko,
BIBWEB - Internet course of librarians: first-year experiences.

For the last year, the Warsaw University Library has been a leading partner of the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Commission on Electronic Publications of the Polish Librarians Association (KWE SBP) in developing BIBWEB - Internet course for librarians. The article attempts to summarise the experiences incurred while working on the course during the past year. It also mentions the opinions of users obtained from a questionnaire at the end of the course.

Art. 6: Magdalena Midura
Distance learning courses in library and information science in the context of developing the Information Society.

Distance learning in library and information science is presented in the context of the needs of developing the Information Society. The extent of coverage of IS issues in LIS academic curricula in the Unites States is discussed. Students are becoming guides in the world of information by using modern information and communication technology, especially the Internet, which is a main means of delivering distance learning.

Art. 7: Lidia Derfert-Wolf
Quality-controlled subject gateways on the Internet.

The article presents services of the subject gateway type, also called subject-based information gateways (SBIGs) or quality-controlled subject gateways, which register Internet resources according to a specified subject area. Also characteristic about these services is a high participation of humans in the selection and preparation of resources, as well as, the presence of published rules of assessment and preparation of sources. Subject gateways are created by individual libraries and research institutions, or by big consortia. They include resources in all areas of knowledge or in one specific area. They are superior to popular search engines by the fact that they guarantee a high quality of indexed sources. Their key group of users is the academic community. The article at hand provides many examples of subject gateways, as well as, national and international projects devoted to their creation and development.