This report compares five information-gathering efforts sponsored by the Dissemination and Resources Group of the National Institute of Education. These five activities were R&D System Monitoring--examining the structure, activities, funding, and communication flow at the systems level; Information Needs Sensing--identifying the information needs of educational information users and assessing how well those needs are being met by existing information services; Evaluation of the State Capacity Building Program--determining whether dissemination capability is being built and if access to information is increasing; Feedforward--attempting to identify information needs of educational practitioners; and Evaluation of the Research and Development Utilization Program (R&DU)--assessing the effectiveness of the R&DU program as a problem-solving/dissemination arrangement. The 64-item bibliography which is attached provides separate listings for each of the activities. (RAO)