European Libraries and Electronic Resources in Mathematical Sciences Project Description The EULER Consortium

The EULER Consortium

* A library with national responsibility in the field of pure mathematics (SUB Göttingen)

* A research library of a national research center (CWI)

* A university library with its distributed department libraries (Univ. Florence)

* A library specialised in digital libraries and netbased information (Univ. Lund / NetLab)

The longest-running international abstracting and reviewing service for mathematics is participating (FIZ Karlsruhe / Zentralblatt für Mathematik).

The project is an initiative of the European Mathematical Society, which represents the community of library users interested in mathematics from the whole of Europe.

Experiences from prior and on-going work of these institutions, sketched below, form the baseline of the EULER project.

The membership of the European Mathematical Society (EMS) consists of almost all mathematical societies in Europe (including Central and Eastern Europe) and about 2000 individual members. The EMS will bring in its Electronic Library of Mathematics, distributed through EMS's system of Internet servers, EMIS, http://www.emis.de/. This Electronic Library is today the most comprehensive archive of freely available mathematical electronic journals and conference proceedings. Scientific coordination of of EMIS is currently with the Department of Mathematics of the Technical University of Berlin (TUB).

FIZ Karlsruhe is incorporated in the Federal Government's Programme of Specialised Information. This implies a special engagement on the part of FIZ Karlsruhe to actively support integration of scientific and technical information in research and education at universities and state-funded research institutions. Zentralblatt für Mathematik / Mathematics Abstracts (http://www.zblmath.fizkarlsruhe. de/), founded in 1931 by O. Neugebauer, is today the longest-running international abstracting and reviewing service in the field of pure, applied and industrial mathematics. It covers the entire spectrum of mathematics and computer science with special emphasis on areas of applications with about 50.000 reviews per year. Development efforts have been undertaken in cooperation with MDC (France) to offer enhanced search functions in MATH Database via the World Wide Web. On an experimental basis, special links to library based document delivery services (GAUSS [Göttingen] and JASON [Bielefeld]) are currently being tested.

Libraries automated management of The University of Florence (UNIFI) started in 1986 with the participation to the Sistema Bibliotecario Nazionale (SBN), promoted by the Italian Ministero per i Beni Culturali ed Ambientali. Currently, 50 Libraries exist, including Faculties, Departments and Institutes, spread over Florence. They are grouped in six functional Poles which are headed by a Coordination Service of the University Central Administration. During past two years libraries services were extended by implementing an On Line Public Access Catalog (OPAC) interfaced to the Web and integrated with the management system (http://www.unifi.it:8000/). Through this WWW/OPAC gateway, world-wide users may freely navigate in the Univ. of Florence Libraries Catalogue 24 hours/day. Recently, in the context of the EU project Caselibrary (no. 3130) an experimental Z39.50 server has been activated too.

The CWI library (http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/departments/BIBL.html) has a large and extensive collection of literature in the fields of mathematics and (theoretical) computer science. Due to the this large collection, the CWI library has a central position in the support of research in the related fields in The Netherlands. Key personnel from CWI actively participates in the development of the Dublin Core Element Set. CWI will make it's OPAC data available as Dublin Core Metadata Database. The big CWI collection of preprints and grey literature will be made accessible via the common EULER approach.

The "Cellule de Coordination Documentaire Nationale pour les Mathématiques" (MDC), with a national scope, assists in any aspect of computer documentation the mathematics research libraries and mathematics departments. Relevant activities of MDC are: establish and update a map of documentation resources in mathematics in France; assist librarians and end users on software for circulating and accessing scientific documentation and information; assist libraries and departments for their local information and communication systems.

The Ministry in charge of the universities asked the MathDoc Cell to manage the FrenchGerman cooperation about the database MATH, first step of its transformation in the European Database in Mathematics (EDBM). In this direction, the MathDoc Cell is involved in the following topics: realisation of the European Mathematics Search Engine (EMASE), whose first application is running on the database MATH. The application to the MATH DB and the installation procedures are worked out by the MathDoc Cell too; realisation of a protocol of electronic input of bibliographical data direct out of the journal editorial office (academic or private publishers); promoting the EDBM, by improving its visibility and its users group, by lobbying various authorities.

The State Library of Lower Saxony and University Library of Göttingen (SUB) is one of the five largest libraries in Germany. Göttingen is in charge of more than 20 specialist collections supported by the German Research Association, for example Natural Sciences (general), Astronomy, Astrophysics, Pure Mathematics, General Theory of Science, History and Organisation of Science, Universal academic journals. Literature published after 1977 and before 1945 (more than 3 million entries) are part of the Göttingen on-line Catalogue, under the aegis of PICA. A comprehensive Direct Order Service is being established. Orders for literature (especially for Mathematics too) can be carried out - by mail, fax or over the WWW (http://www.gwdg.de/~sub/homepage.htm) directly. For a fee, the articles ordered will be processed and sent directly to the user within 48 hours by mail, fax and by E-mail or Ariel.

NetLab, the Research and Development Department at Lund University Library, Sweden, is running or participating in a number of projects in collaborative efforts with other institutions and organisations from the Nordic Countries, Europe and USA: DESIRE (http://www.ub2.lu.se/desire/), the Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education, is one of the largest projects in the European Union Telematics For Research Sector of the Fourth Framework Program. During two years from Jan 1996, DESIRE will try to develop an information infrastructure for the European academic community by providing methods, tools and demonstrator services. NetLab is part of the resource discovery and indexing work package and contributes to the development of a general model of quality subject services (incl. quality and selection methods, production of metadata, information structuring). NetLab's main responsibility is the development of a robotbased European Web Index. Steps will be taken to integrate quality subject services and the Web Index into a coherent discovery and retrieval environment.

Nordic Metadata Project (http://linnea.helsinki.fi/meta/) supported by NORDINFO, intends to create a Nordic Metadata production, indexing and retrieval environment. The goal is to enhance end-user services by making digital documents more easily searchable and deliverable over the Net. NetLab cooperates with the international metadata community, especially regarding the Dublin Core specification. NetLab will create a user environment and support service and develop conversion software from Dublin Core to Nordic MARC formats and vice versa. NetLab's main task is to improve the discovery and retrieval of Nordic Internet documents through a metadata aware search service (a extension of the Nordic Web Index).

EELS (http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/), Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden, is an information system for quality assessed Internet resources in the technical sciences. It is a cooperation between the Swedish Universities of Technology Libraries and it is arranged according to the subject classification scheme from Engineering Information Inc., USA.