Information World Review is a title about online information.  Yet the last two days of this week have seen IWR brought to a standstill by power cuts.  Broadwick Street in central London is home to VNU and a host of publishing companies, but little or no information flowed from this street due to EDF Energy equipment failing in the Soho area.

With no access to the publishing systems in our London office, I drifted towards the British Museum Great Court reading room, probably the greatest library and host of information in the world.  Sitting amongst the shelves and desks where the great Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy once worked, it was a sobering reminder that printed paper still has enormous power, whether there's a power supply or not.

Online information is undoubtedly the future and a powerful and productive medium, when all is working well, but yesterday's events also highlighted that if a power supplier fails to provide a basic level of service, then the online information world will fail in its service.

In the heat of summer and with our power supplies returned to Winter of Discontent service levels, a book and a library are reassuringly reliable.