This first of three volumes of the 1992 Australian Council for Adult Literacy (ACAL) Conference Papers includes 10 papers from the plenary and keynote sessions. The theme of "When Basic Skills and Information Processing Just Aren't Enough: Rethinking Reading in New Times" (Allan Luke) is the moral and political consequences of ways of reading. "Therapeutic Relief to the Psycho-Sexual Congested Conference Delegate...at a Price" (Mary Hartmann) is a tongue-in-cheek invitation to the speaker's clinics for literacy professionals who are feeling the pressure of their jobs. "Literacy Practices and the Construction of Personhood" (Brian Street) focuses on the implications for pedagogy of approaching literacy and the construction of personhood from an anthropological viewpoint."Assembling Reading and Writing: How Institutions Construct Literate Competencies" (Peter Freebody) provides examples of the developing perspective of literacy practices socially and institutionally embedded. "Being Numerate: Whose Right? Who's Left?" (Sue Willis) explores the continuing demands that levels of numeracy must be raised and the argument that mathematics is deeply implicated in social inequality. "Address to the ACAL Forum" (Paul Brock) reviews adult English language and literacy provision currently offered by the community-based education sector. "From Now to the Year 2000" (Ann Whyte) considers developments in adult and community education. "Community Literacy" (Kay Schofield) addresses community provision of literacy training. "'New Times' and Literacies that Matter" (Colin Lankshear) uses a sociological analysis of current economic and social trends within developed countries to review the main forms of literacy requirements. "Removing Cultural Barriers to Numeracy" (Alan Bishop) looks at numeracy as culturally based and socially situated knowledge. (YLB)