From:

Ellen den Boef (ellen.denboef@wkap.nl)
Manager Library Relations
Kluwer Academic Publishers

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                        PRESS RELEASE

    Dordrecht, Leiden, September 1995

    KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, Dordrecht, first to sign agreement with
    Pica, Centre for Library Automation in Leiden, on electronic access of
    full text journal articles within the WebDOC pilot project.

    Within the WebDOC project, initiated by Pica, a number of Dutch and German
    German academic libraries will cooperate with commercial publishers
    to offer their endusers access to electronic journal articles.

    Publishers will deliver SGML-headers of journal articles containing
    bibliographic data and abstracts. From these data, Pica will build a
    catalogue (WebCAT) linking to full text articles stored on local servers
    maintained by the information providers or on a server at Pica's.

    Initially, the Kluwer journals to be accessed will be mainly in the field
    of Mathematics, Information Science and Economics/Business Information.

    For the time being, document formats are restricted to Postscript, PDF,
    HTML and TIFF-images. Kluwer has opted for PDF files.

    Documents will be made accessible via WWW-browsers such as MOSAIC and
    Netscape to endusers who are registered at one of the participating
    libraries. Endusers of libraries that are subscribing to journals Kluwer
    makes available in WebDOC will have unlimited access, whereas a
    pay-per-view system will apply for journals to which there is no
    subscription.

    Pica is building the technical infrastructure to arrange access to WebCAT
    and to the document servers including the accounting mechanisms which
    controls the access.

    WebDOC is expected to go live on January 1, 1996 and will run for an
    initial trial period until the end of December 1997. At that time, the
    project will be evaluated and will be continued if the results are as
    planned.

    Libraries that have agreed to participate are:
    * in The Netherlands
    -  Royal Library, The Hague
    -  University Library Groningen
    -  University Library Utrecht
    -  Library of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam
    -  University Library Nijmegen
    -  Library of the Limburg University, Maastricht
    -  Library of the Technical University Twente, Enschede

    * in Germany
    -  Hamburg University Library
    -  Goettingen University Library
    -  University Library Oldenburg
    -  Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt
    -  TIB Hannover

    It is expected that more libraries and publishers will follow in the
    course of the project.

    Further information can be obtained from:

    Kluwer Academic Publishers         Pica
    Mr M. van der Linden               Mr M. Dekkers
    P.O. Box 17                        P.O. Box 876
    3300 AA Dordrecht                  2300 AW Leiden
    tel. +31 78 (6) 392 392            tel. +31 71 (5) 257 257
    fax  +31 78 (6) 392 254
    E-mail: vanderlinden@wkap.nl