New approach to Web-based document access

[Jennifer Hartzell]

The following is a news announcement from the Research Libraries
Group.  It has been posted to other library- and museum-related
LISTSERVs.


The US-based Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG), and Pica, the
Centre for Library Automation in The Netherlands, have signed an
agreement to codevelop a document discovery and delivery service on
the World Wide Web, called WebDOC.

The new service will allow end users to search a special catalog of
bibliographic records (maintained in parallel on both the RLG and
Pica host computers), via Web browsers and to retrieve documents
linked to them -- full text, articles, maps, images, etc. -- using
Web technology. WebDOC interposes a licensing and accounting server
between the catalog record and access to the whole document it
describes, to verify that the user is covered by an institutional
license or else to debit the user's personal account.

WebDOC is designed to provide an environment for end-user access
where the rights holders may seek compensation for use of their
materials.  These include many journal articles and some unusual,
high-quality image and primary sources collections.

RLG and Pica plan to launch WebDOC as a pilot production project
this year, starting in January in the Netherlands and Germany and in
September in the United States. Pica has already identified a group
of institutions in the Netherlands that will participate with their
end users in the pilot; RLG is in the process of identifying pilot
participants from among its members. Both organizations seek
cooperation with commercial document suppliers and publishers to
participate in the project. Pica recently signed the first contract
with a publisher, Kluwer Academic Publishers in Dordrecht, The
Netherlands.

WebDOC is the first phase of a broader strategic collaboration
planned to achieve streamlined access to documents in paper form as
well as digitized materials -- and to give the end user a single
interface for information retrieval, document request,
electronically assisted document delivery, and conventional
interlibrary loan. RLG and Pica intend to pool development resources
in creating shareable software modules and to offer integrated
end-user services to libraries and their patrons on both sides of
the Atlantic.

Both organizations have home pages on the World Wide Web.
  To learn more about RLG, connect to http://www-rlg.stanford.edu
  For Pica, connect to http://www.pica.nl