Recent government initiatives to combat social exclusion within the United Kingdom have served to place librarians and libraries as prominent players in the movement to providing information over a wider social context. For example, The Peoples Network is a government initiative to connect all public libraries to the information superhighway by the end of 2002. Other similar initiatives to combat social exclusion are being undertaken by the Gates Foundation in the US, Canada and Chile. Internationally published literature demonstrates a recognition of the importance of access to information to the preservation and upholding of the democratic process, and the continual development of the electronic environment is central in facilitating these changes. An ever increasing amount of library and information science (LIS) literature is becoming available through electronic databases, with current trends suggesting that literature available in this format has the potential to be disseminated quickly, more easily, to a wider audience and more cost-effectively. Given these directives, LIS journals can be fundamental in encouraging library workers to see LIS in a wider social context, though an emphasis on focused,unbiased and current content which oversteps parochial boundaries. LIS journals can convey the wider social context by incorporating experiences of meeting and problem-solving new challenges, such as the provision of changing resources, their delivery by a variety of means, reaching remote users who may never visit a library, and the establishing of whole new client base and relationships. (Contains 21 references.) (Author)