VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM .1.

Information and Society is the topic of a new course that was taught over one semester at the Department of Library and Information Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University at the beginning of the year. The course cotters the definition of the information society; historical perspectives, industrialisation of society and the concept of a post-industrial society; scenarios for the future; forecasting social and technological change; demographics; trends in research and development for LIS, the virtual librarian, and implications for professional education and continuing development. Students were asked to contribute their ideas about the future of information development by the year 2000 at the beginning of the course and their thoughts are given below - these should provide a nice contrast with those already published in this column.