Portal launched for German scientific information

Citation

Blake, M. (2004), "Portal launched for German scientific information", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2004.26322aag.002

Portal launched for German scientific information

Portal launched for German scientific informationwww.vascoda.de

Vascoda is a new interdisciplinary Internet portal for German and international scientific information. It was established by 37 front-line German libraries, research centres and academic information providers.

Designed as a central access gateway, vascoda represents the sum of the German information services which have been established with public funding. Thus it provides easy access to a mix of scientific information products and services in one user interface.

All Internet pages linked to the central access gateway have been checked for quality. Most of the information offered via vascoda is free of charge; however, fee-based information services such as commercial databases are also accessible.

Both the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) support vascoda. These organizations, together with the partners involved in the information alliance, view the portal as a foundation stone of the "German Digital Library". Currently involved in vascoda are 23 subject-based virtual libraries (ViFas), the four established German information alliances (EconDoc, GetInfo, infoconnex, and medical science), and the Electronic Journals Library (EZB).

ViFas are user interfaces on the Web that give an overall view of the specific information available for different subject areas. They have been established over the last few years with the support of the DFG in order to provide easy access to Internet sources with high quality information and – through the integration of library catalogues – they also offer easy access to printed publications.

The four German information alliances likewise provide assistance with information retrieval. They sum up all types of relevant information on a subject level, ensuring not only comprehensive access to information sources but also the immediate delivery of the full texts of scientific publications found during the search. In most cases this means that the requested information can be downloaded onto the PC and printed out straight after retrieval.

The EZB is a cooperative service of 209 libraries that make available electronic journals published on the Internet. Vascoda combines all these information sources in one interface. Its aim is to continually bring together more and more partners offering information from all scientific disciplines.