To: German Studies Bibliographers at ARL Libraries

Participating in the German Demonstration Project

From: Jutta Reed-Scott

Re: Project Up-date

June 14, 1996

With this message we are initiating the new electronic forum

for the AAU/ARL German Demonstration Project in which your library

participates. We have established three discussion lists to

facilitate communications about the project with ARL directors

(aau-gerdir@cni.org), chief collection management officers (aau-

gercol@cni.org), and German Studies bibliographers (aau-

gerbib@cni.org) at the 19 libraries that are so far participating

in this project. We will need your support and input as we move

forward. This electronic forum is intended to keep you informed and

to seek your advice as the project takes shape.

We will provide project progress reports at regular intervals.

This first report briefly reviews the project background and goals

and summarizes some recent developments.

The genesis of the project is the Research Libraries Project,

initiated in 1993 by the Association of American Universities (AAU)

in collaboration with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

A central focus of the AAU/ARL action agenda is the pursuit of a

network-based, distributed program for coordinated development for

foreign acquisitions through the implementation of three

demonstration projects. These are targeted on research materials

that originate in Latin America, Japan, and Germany. Additional

information about these projects can be found on the ARL

Collections Services Web page (URL:

http://arl.cni.org/collect/collect.html)

The primary goals of the AAU/ARL German Demonstration

Project are to (1) assure effective and timely access to and

delivery of German language research materials through electronic

resource sharing and improved interlibrary document delivery

services; and (2) test linking between North American and German

libraries to expand access to specialized resources in support of

German political science and historical research. This is a

cooperative library effort among United States, Canadian and German

research institutions. The Library of Congress, under the umbrella

of ARL and AAU, is providing organizational support for this

project. So far the following institutions have agreed to

participate: Brigham Young; Brown; UC Berkeley; UC-Santa Barbara;

Chicago; Duke; Harvard; Kansas; Library of Congress; Michigan

State; Minnesota; New York Public Library; New York University;

North Carolina; Northwestern; Southern Illinois; Toronto; Virginia,

and Univ. of Washington.

The Library of Congress is presently completing the special

arrangements so that libraries in the Project will have access to

the files of the Deutsche Bibliothek mounted at the Library of

Congress. Starting on July 1, access to these cataloging records

will be available to Project libraries via Z39.50. This includes

essentially all bibliographic records created at the Deutsche

Bibliothek since 1993 for materials in any physical format,

including serials and sound recordings. The records are in USMARC

format. They are received from the Deutsche Bibliothek in UNIMARC

and an LC conversion program converts them to USMARC.

A central Project goal is collaborating with German research

libraries to expand network access to German research resources. As

the first step in improving access to state government documents,

the Universitaetsbibliothek in Goettingen has now mounted a

testfile of selected publications of the state government of Lower

Saxony on their server. Using Netscape, you can look at them at:

http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/landtag/landtag.htm

The pages are formatted as "pdf" files, and you need the Adobe

Acrobat Reader to view them. There is a link by clicking on "PDF"

near the top of the Niedersaechsische Landestages page to Adobe,

and you can click there to download a copy of the Reader, which is

free. Once the Reader is installed, Netscape will use it to display

the file.

Of crucial importance to the Project is cooperation with the

Deutsche Bibliothek and German government agencies in locating or

encouraging development of digital versions of federal government

documents. We have had series of discussions with Klaus Dieter

Lehmann, Director, Deutsche Bibliothek, to develop plans for making

digital versions of German federal government documents available

on the Web.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this

progress report.

-- Jutta