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Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu of the Centre for Interactive Systems Research, Department of Information Science, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1 0HB contributes a research paper “Methods for Evaluation OPACs” to Library and Information Research News, Vol. 13 No. 47, Spring 1990, pp. 20–30. She concludes, from her examination of 31 papers, that the state‐of‐the‐art in the evaluation of Online Public Access Catalogues is still at a diagnostic stage and finds it necessary to warn that, when seeking better performance, user instruction must not be regarded as a substitute for system improvement. The article is a good starting point for anyone attempting evaluation of their own OPAC system, but shows that reliable evaluation of information systems remains elusive.