During the past twenty years the importance of educating students for the individual use of books and libraries has become an integral part of the thinking of teachers and librarians. It has become obvious in the course of refreshing what has to be taught to users, that not only the content but also the methodology has to be updated. Tools were taught at two levels: at the basic level functions of a type of tool have to be presented using basic works as examples, while at level two (advanced) the critical selection of sources available within a type of tool has to be enhanced. The relation between traditional and computer readable reference tools must be re-considered. Basic reference tools (bibliographies, lexicons, catalogues) are present in their traditional form, but students should be prepared for the use of their computerised versions, too. Traditional card catalogues as well as the hierarchical UDC as a retrieval tool loose importance giving their place to co-ordinated retrieval systems using the natural language. The logic of searching in these systems, the use of logic operations in combination with words must by all means be taught to students. A broadly conceived subject in the field of informatics would be useful that dealt with the content issues and the computer technology behind processing and retrieval. Students (and the society) should also be taught to formulate correct questions.