Project Description: Context

The rapidly increasing importance of the internet for scientific information and communication as well as technical development of new media systems have changed the general conditions of scientific publishing in a significant way. Today, computer aided publishing is the common method in science. That concerns preprints, in addition to print versions published material and also information, being only available in a digitized form. Hence not only the publishing behaviour but also the perception of scientific information and the research behaviour of scientists have changed fundamentally. Often information, which is not available in the internet, is actually no longer perceived.

Beyond the quasi-free access to scientific relevant information on the web there exists an infrastructure to which libraries make a substantial contribution towards operating and financing. In Germany, especially the special subject libraries have succeeded to important tasks in the nationwide supply of literature. Since 1949 the German Research Foundation (DFG) has been organising and assisting the system of special subject libraries financially to place scientific relevant information in each special subject at the scientist’s disposal and to hedge the peak demand of scientific literature. In this cooperative system of nationwide supply of literature the SUB Göttingen is in charge of the special subject collection of "Pure Mathematics" and the TIB Hannover is in charge of the collection of "Applied Mathematics".

Initially, this system had been oriented to print-media, but in consequence of the development of information technology, it has to meet new requirements. Therefore special subject libraries are built with support of the DFG. They connect traditional library media and digital material to an all-over technical information system. The aim is to facilitate the search for scientific relevant information in a significant way. In the year 1998 the DFG established a conceptual basis for the set-up of special subject virtual libraries due to the Memorandum zur Weiterentwicklung des Systems der überregionalen Literaturversorgung. By means of their Positionspapier: Wissenschaftliche Literaturversorgungs- und Informationssysteme - Schwerpunkte der Förderung bis 2015 (June 2006) further steps towards the implementation were done. Usually the set-up is realized by the corresponding special subject library.