Dunford-Pettis type properties are studied in individual Banach spaces as well as in spaces of operators. Bibasic sequences are used to characterize Banach spaces which fail to have the Dunford-Pettis property. The question of whether a space of operators has a Dunford-Pettis property when the dual of the domain and the codomain have the respective property is studied. The notion of an almost weakly compact operator plays a consistent and important role in this study.