European Libraries and Electronic Resources in Mathematical Sciences Project Description Benefits and Results

Benefits and Results

Access to cooperating international services is a strong requirement of mathematicians and other scientific users. The project will define the core of a European information system for mathematics and integrate different national efforts in a trans-national European context. It will strengthen the European character of the database MATH, it will develop the possibilities of document delivery for all European mathematicians and new features for the scientific community. The European Mathematical Society has expressed its plans to extend Zentralblatt fuer Mathematik / MATH Database into a European database with decentralised production in European countries. The MATH Database should be regarded as a "large facility" for mathematical research in the 5th Framework Programme. EULER is an open system: future data are expected from different countries. Project aims are correlated to Italian SBN projects. The project will involve French, German and Swedish library related electronic resources. It will foster a common understanding of problems and solutions throughout Europe.

EULER will strengthen the European position in scientific information and communication, especially with respect to US American developments.

The project will contribute to the Information Society in Europe, by enabling scientists to effectively make use of existing and emerging network-based services. The project will contribute to the development of modern libraries infrastructures, by enhancing the availability and accessibility of library services, and by integrating library services within related information infrastructures. End-users will have more direct access both to the library collections themselves and to information available to libraries through the networks. EULER will open up international library related material for European mathematicians.

EULER will develop the prototype of a advanced academic information system. EULER integrates for-pay (document delivery at libraries, commercial information providers, scientific databases like MATH, commercial electronic journals) and non-for-pay services (library OPACs, preprint and other Internet servers, and some free electronic academic journals) for mathematicians. The integration of all these services will generate an added value for the user with a minimum of additional costs. The new integrated information service will be more attractive for the community of library users from mathematics, as well as for the libraries themselves, than the single services alone. An increase of the use of the integrated services can be expected. But the most important result will be the improvement of access to library related information sources for the scientific community.