The basic objective of this study was to examine, apparently for the first time in communications research, the impact on professional communication of an annual review publication. A sample of users and non-users of Volume 1 of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology was identified, and questionnaires were sent to nearly 3,000 of them. The respo"dents were divided into three groups for analysis: those who had used the Annual Review, those who had only seen it or heard of it, and those who had not yet seen it or heard of it. Users of the Annual Review differed from non-users in a number of ways, particularly on measures of professional activity level, where they were uniformly higher than the non-users. They reported a variety of valuable uses. The impact of the Annual Review is already partially evident from the tendency of users to re-examine cited literature again, to seek new cited literature, and to seek contact with the authors of cited literature. Both the questionnaire and several informal interview sessions sought to elicit suggestions for improvement of the series. This study suggests that annual reviews have great potential for advancing many fields of inquiry and should, where possible, be encouraged and supported, preferably without demanding so precipitous a rate of growth toward self-support that the dilution in quality is ultimately self-defeating to the sponsoring organization. (Author/CM)