Article is a digest of the most important parts of the thesis with the same title that was successfully defended at the Institute of Information Studies & Librarianship of the Faculty of Philosophy & Arts at the Charles University in Prague. It analyses current state of information services for iron and steel industry in Czech Republic. It also gives a short overview of historical development of these services during the past twenty years with special attention given to changes after 1989. The article particularly describes the activities of the Steel Federation, Inc. and interest association Informetal, including description of metallurgical bibliographic database METAL, as well as activities of technical library of the steelworks Třinecké železárny, a.s, and information centre of the company ArcelorMittal Ostrava, a.s.

The master thesis is devoted to various types of information services and an aspect of “added value” within these services. The author maps added value in information services and tries to find a basis for achieving added value in both commercial and public sphere and in context of information systems. Based on a research carried out by the author, current situation in the Czech Republic is described. Furthermore, the thesis describes some particular examples of value-added information services and their practical use, characterizes information processing software tools and outlines trends in value added information services area. (The abstract refers to the original master thesis text.)