On‐line services in Europe

The paper is a written adaptation of a talk at the July 1977 Cranfield Conference. It has two main purposes: (a) to bring to the attention of the information community the facts and figures collected by EUSIDIC (b) to develop proposals for a more rational basis for European policies regarding on‐line services. Three assumptions are made in this presentation: (i) that it is possible to discuss on‐line services without implying that that is all there is to information transfer (ii) that it is possible to do so without a renewed description of the basics or details of what is available (iii) that it is possible to speak of European problems and solutions which are not necessarily incompatible with, but distinct from, either individual, regional or global problems and solutions.