Final Edition

Starting today, The Evening Sun is changing its presentation of news about the stock market.There are changes in the display of stock and mutual fund tables to produce more compact stock pages with more timely information.The mutual fund table will not be carried on Mondays. Full mutual fund listings, which contain figures from Friday's close, are available in both the Saturday and Sunday Sun. The mutual fund table will appear tomorrow through Friday in The Evening Sun.The stock tables are more compact.

Starting today, The Evening Sun is changing its presentation of news about the stock market.Streetwise, a nationally syndicated column for investors by Herb Greenberg, will appear every Friday in Money Today.On Monday, there will be changes in the display of stock and mutual fund tables to produce more compact stock pages with more timely information.The mutual fund table will not be carried on Monday. Full mutual fund listings, which contain figures from Friday's close, are available in both the Saturday and Sunday Sun. The mutual fund table will appear Tuesday through Friday in The Evening Sun.The stock tables will be more compact.

Former owners of the Harford Edition, the free weekly newspaper that died two weeks ago, say they hope to start a new weekly publication in the county but need financial backers to do so.The newspaper ceased publication June 4, after nearly two years of operation.Robert Lippman and William Olfson said they would seek financing to start a new publication but concede that's no small task."Neither of us have the financial resources to underwrite it," said Mr. Lippman. "The existence of this paper depended entirely on advertising revenue."

After the launch tonight of a major PBS series examining the state of education in America, local viewers may telephone questions about the condition of state schools to a panel of experts gathered by Maryland Public Television.MPT is producing a live local follow-up show to "Learning in America: Education on Trial," a MacNeil/Lehrer production airing at 10 p.m. the next three Mondays. MPT's production follows at 11 p.m., and viewers may call a toll-free number - (800) 222-1292 - to talk about Maryland schools.

BOWIE -- The annual "John Williams Watch" began in earnest yesterday after his agent, Fred Slaughter, sent a fax informing Washington Bullets general manager John Nash that the missing forward was headed for Washington.The first rumors that Williams might end his contract impasse appeared in the final edition of yesterday's USA Today, with the forward reportedly no longer wishing to play for the Bullets, who have withheld an estimated $500,000 of last season's salary for missing the first 49 games due to excess weight.

CineMaryland, a television newsmagazine devoted to films and filmmaking in Maryland that has been available to local TV stations for 15 years, is going off the air. "We had a run of over 15 years, but at the end, nobody was watching," said show host and co-producer Rebecca Jessop. "It wasn't a tough decision to make, but it was sad. " Produced out of Howard Community College, CineMaryland had been broadcast on educational channels in Baltimore, Howard, Harford and Carroll counties, as well as other areas throughout the state.

ON AND OFF THE AIR:* Country music is perhaps best heard in its namesake location: out in the country. And that's the case tomorrow with a special edition of Maryland Public Television's "New Country Video" (at 6:30 p.m.).Host Laurie DeYoung, of WPOC-FM 93.1 (which simulcasts the weekly program), is taping this week's show at the two-day Fair Hill Country Music Festival at the Fair Hill Race Track in Cecil County.Festival visitors and artisans will be interviewed, along with some of the festival headliners, who include Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Trisha Yearwood, Dwight Yoakam, Clint Black and Patty Loveless.

How much is your first edition of John Barth's "The Floating Opera" worth by now? Of "Maryland Silversmiths, 1715-1830"? Of "A Branch of May: Poems"? The answers are there, in dollars, in "Collected Books: The Guide to Values," by Allen and Patricia Ahearn of Rockville. Just out (Putnam, $50), with about 15,000 entries, this is the first such U.S. compendium since "The Book Collector's Handbook of Values," by the late Van Allen Bradley, in 1982.What books rate the term "collected"? The Ahearns, veterans of the business themselves as Quill & Brush book shop, go by current market standards.

The column you are reading has a new name - "Back Story" - but its roots go back almost 60 years in Sun history. The story starts in 1946, when Neil H. Swanson, executive editor of the Sunpapers, launched the sepia-toned Sunday Sun Magazine. Swanson laid down the magazine's editorial mission: "Maryland is a fascinating place to live, a place filled with interesting people and chock-full of untold stories." And the first issue, on Jan. 6, 1946, was replete with Maryland stories, photographs and advertising.

Warfield's magazine said yesterday that it will cease publication after more than five years of covering Maryland business. Its publisher said the biweekly glossy will be replaced by a weekly tabloid called Warfield's Business Record."