March 15, 1996
To: Directors of ARL Libraries with Strong German Collections
From: Duane E. Webster, ARL Executive Director
Re: Participation in the AAU/ARL German Demonstration Project
ARL is inviting your participation in a project to develop a distributed, network- based system of acquisitions, access, and document delivery in support of the study of German political science and historical research. This is a cooperative library effort among ARL institutions with strong German library collections and commitment to research in German political science and history. This project emerged from the Research Libraries Project of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is a component of the AAU/ARL common action agenda. More than a dozen ARL libraries have already agreed to participate in this Project, and we hope that you will join this important collaborative effort.
A central theme of the proposed work plan is tri-national exchanges of information and practical experience with electronic resource sharing. The project will promote experimentation and will provide a test bed for developing transnational resource sharing agreements. The primary project goals 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) to test linking between ARL and German research libraries to expand access to specialized research resources. The project will focus on four specific activities:
- We will cooperate with the Deutsche Bibliothek and German government agencies in locating or encouraging development of digital versions of federal government documents.
- We will collaborate with German research libraries to test network access to regional government documents.
- We will develop complementary systems for cataloging and document delivery.
- We will identify serials published in Germany that are critical for furthering scholarship, but are not widely held in North America, and devise effective document delivery strategies.
As a first step, the Library of Congress has made special arrangements so that libraries in the Project will have access to the files of the Deutsche Bibliothek mounted at the Library of Congress. Access to the Deutsche Bibliothek cataloging records will be available to libraries participating in the project on a subscription basis via Z39.50. The annual subscription fee is about $650. For your information, I am enclosing additional details about access to the bibliographic records of the Deutsche Bibliothek. The documentation was prepared by the Library of Congress and summarizes answers to questions raised by several institutions. The records are accessible now to libraries that have a Z39.50-1992 conformant client.
For the past year the Working Group for the German Demonstration Project, chaired by Winston Tabb, has developed the work plans for this demonstration project. The initial planning phase has concluded, and we are now launching this AAU/ARL demonstration project. An immediate priority is to test linking between ARL and German research libraries to expand access to specialized research resources. Preliminary discussions with library leaders in Germany have identified commitment to pursue electronic resource sharing. We plan to cooperate with the Deutsche Bibliothek and German government agencies in locating or encouraging development of digital versions of federal government documents. As the next step, we will determine the availability of selected government documents from Germany in digitized form and work with colleagues in Germany on expanding the list of publications available electronically. The Working Group will consult with staff at the participating libraries concerning categories of documents for which electronic access will be particularly important. Additional and more specific requests will be invited from both librarians and scholars as the project unfolds. The participants will develop a plan for distribution of these materials, or the acquisition of publications relating to political science or historical studies in electronic form.
Please feel free to call me if you would like to discuss your participation in this Project. We would appreciate a response concerning this invitation by the end of March via an email message to Jutta Reed-Scott (jutta@cni.org).
I look forward to your affirmative response.
Go to:
Library of Congress