Introduction

Information professionals have traditionally focused on managing formally published information resources in hard copies, often called analogue sources. A variety of information services appeared over the years that aim to make the analogue collection of documents available to users effectively and efficiently. The nature of library and information activities changed towards the middle of the 20th century when the emphasis, especially in some research organizations, was laid on providing access to the latest scientific and research information through specialized information services called current awareness services, and selective dissemination of information services. These information services improved significantly in the second half of the 20th century with the introduction of computers in preparing catalogues and indexes of scholarly information resources.

Since the 1960s the nature and scope of library and information services changed significantly with the appearance of online databases, which made it possible for users to access bibliographic databases remotely. Information services and management activities in those days centred around building and using various tools, technologies and standards for handling analogue information resources and computerized bibliographic databases. Soon online library catalogue databases provided online access to library's holdings and these were soon followed by a new set of software, broadly called library management systems, which automated various library and information management activities such as collection management, circulation, and so on. The main objective of all these activities was to provide better and easier access to information – documents and text, mostly abstracting, databases. So information management activities, especially in the western world, changed significantly from the 1970s onwards. Increasingly information professionals needed to acquire a broad range of professional skills in order to be able to operate with the traditional tools, techniques and standards thatwere primarily designed for managing analogue resources and the corresponding services, and also to acquire a new set of skills to work with various remote online databases and the local library management systems. At the same time, interest in research and development activities grew significantly in different areas of user studies, focusing on the understanding and analysis of user information behaviour and their information seeking and retrieval strategies; development and testing of various information search and retrieval techniques; and development of tools and techniques for use and evaluation of various online databases and library management systems.