SUMMARY.The ideas presented in this paper draw on the author's 25 years experience as Director of the ERIC Clearing House on Elementary and Early Childhood Education (ERIC/EECE), and the responsibility for disseminating the information from this vast document collection to teachers, parents and others in the field. The paper discusses current trends in the environment to which the dissemination of child development and early education knowledge is directed. It considers ways in which practitioners receive and use new information and research findings, and particularly the culture gap between scientist/researcher and clinician/practitioner, and considers the implications of this for those who disseminate this information.