One of the most exciting developments to occur within the library profession in recent years has been the re-evaluation of library's role in resource discovery in the web environment. This has involved recognition of short-comings of online library catalogues, a re-affirmation of the importance of metadata and a new focus on the wealth of…

This paper discusses the collection of digital publications at Die Deutsche Bibliothek as part of its mandate as the central archival library and national bibliographic center of the Federal Republic of Germany to collect, archive, index, and provide public access to all German and German-language publications. The first section describes the…

Academic libraries today are complex institutions with multiple roles and a host of related operations and services developed over the years. Yet their fundamental purpose has remained the same: to provide access to trustworthy, authoritative knowledge. Consequently, academic libraries--along with their private and governmental counterparts--have…

The scholarly communication system is in a critical stage, due to a number of factors. The Open Access movement is perhaps the most interesting response that the scientific community has tried to give to this problem. The paper examines strengths and weaknesses of the Open Access strategy in general and, more specifically, of the Open Archives…

Discusses the cost of access to research information and suggests that lower staff costs in a digital library setting are a key to providing more affordable access. Topics include equivalent library services; quality of service; differences between disciplines; archiving and preservation; citations, hyperlinks, and reference linking; metadata;…