Scientific digital libraries in Germany: Global-Info, a federal government initiative

Abstract

This talk will introduce and comment on the German Digital Libraries program Global-Info. It will start with a brief introduction to the way research is organized in Germany, followed by some background on ongoing and completed German projects related to Digital Libraries. Then the approach and organization of the Global-Info program are presented. Global-Info is an interdisciplinary program that includes producers, intermediaries and consumers of scientific information. They are represented by learned societies, publishers, universities, and libraries. The program started at the beginning of this year and will run for a 6-year period with individual project durations of two to three years. A main characteristic of Global-Info is that the more specific goals and its organization will be developed by the scientific community and the publishers - i. e. the funded organizations - in a bottom up process in the course of the program.