What price information
Information today may be envisaged as passing through a chain of hands from its point of origin to its point of use: as information originators and users have become more separate in place or time, various types of intermediaries have grown up to fill the gap between them. Online services involve several of the links in the chain and I want to consider the theme of this meeting, "Concepts of marketing and pricing online services", from the point of view of one of them in particular, namely the search intermediary or library. This is the point at which many of the final recipients of the information, the end-users, currently meet the chain of information provision; it is where much of the marketing of information is done and where the users form their judgement of the utility of the various means of its provision, and it will probably remain so for some time to come in spite of the current interest in by-passing this link and selling to end-users direct. Although the paper's title mentions only the price of information, it is hardly possible to discuss price without considering also value and costs, since the perceived value of the information received will determine in large part what price the market will bear, while the costs of production and delivery will determine the minimum price which one must charge. I am particularly concerned with those fields which may be loosely lumped together as academic and public library information-science, medicine, the humanities and general. Here we have special problems with perceptions of the value of information and thus its marketing and pricing; in this paper I shall briefly consider these and the ways in which closer cooperation between libraries and the providers of the services we are selling may help to solve some of them.
The micro- and macroeconomics of information
L'information est aujourd'hui au centre des pensees et des pratiques economiques. L'A. analyse l'impact de l'information au niveau micro- et macroeconomique. Dans un premier temps, elle passe en revue l'histoire de la pensee economique concernant les questions d'information aux niveaux micro- et macro-. Puis elle examine comment les manieres de prendre en compte l'information affecte la facon d'envisager l'economie elle-meme. Differentes perspectives sur l'information comme secteur specifique d'activite economique sont considerees. Enfin l'A. explore l'impact de l'incorporation de l'information dans la theorie economique sur un certain nombre de concepts economiques cle, avant d'examiner les implications de ces developpements sur le plan politique et pour la recherche.
Proliferative kidney disease: first reported outbreak in North America
Abstract. Proliferative kidney disease (PKD) was diagnosed in rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri Richardson, at the Hagerman, Idaho, State Fish Hatchery. Wild fish from Riley Creek, one of the hatchery water supplies, were infected with PKD organisms. Clinical signs, gross pathology and histopathology of affected fish were typical of those reported for PKD in salmonids from European hatcheries. In addition to lesions normally seen, we observed a severe vasculitis and occlusion of renal and hepatic vessels. Ultrastructure of the PKD organism and possible inclusion body production sites are described. The disease outbreak was complicated by the presence of other infectious diseases. This is the first recorded outbreak of PKD in North America.