The use of information and communication technologies in commercial libraries in the UK

A survey undertaken between January and March 1998 investigated the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in a sample of 120 industrial and commercial libraries. Ninety‐six per cent of the organisations which responded to the questionnaire use computers for some aspect of their library and information services. ICT was used for a range of office and other applications including, in rank order, e‐mail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentation packages and database management systems. Ninety‐one per cent of the sample used various Internet facilities including e‐mail, World Wide Web, file transfer protocol (ftp) and telnet. This paper describes the results of the survey, reporting on the current state of the art of ICT use and future plans for automation in the sample.