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GetInfo: WWW full-text server for science and technology

28 Nov 2000 - By creating the GetInfo service, Fachinformationszentrum (FIZ) Karlsruhe and Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) Hannover, provide a central port of call in the web for the provision of full-text literature in science and technology. GetInfo’s goal is to set up and operate a full-text server for electronic documents and metadata. The service provides searching for free, the ordering of full texts will be charged. GetInfo is being supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research, and will be available for access in spring 2001.
 
The transition of scientific publishing from print to electronic documents is developing at an ever faster pace, thus confronting authors, publishers, and information providers with new challenges. The amount of electronically available documents is constantly increasing, and the Internet is becoming an ever more attractive media for information provision. FIZ Karlsruhe and TIB Hannover have thus decided to join their forces and competences, and to found their joint venture, GetInfo, in order to offer high-quality services to authors, publishers, and readers.
 
Electronic documents are dispersed on numerous servers at publishers, learned societies, institutes, and libraries. Hence information seekers have to cope with a multitude of search- and access options on a variety of servers. A central access point, GetInfo will make available electronic publications of relevant specialist publishers as well as "grey" literature which is not readily available through commercial book channels. A single search in GetInfo covers the holdings of numerous other servers. Documents are displayed electronically. If documents are not available in electronic version, they can be ordered via TIB Hannover’s and FIZ Karlsruhe‘s services (TIBOrder and FIZ AutoDoc) integrated in GetInfo.
 
GetInfo‘s offering for authors and publishers includes the digitization and archiving of their documents, relevant references in databases, professional marketing among a sizeable number of customers from business, industry, major research institutions, and universities, as well as the entire customer administration and billing.