The MeDoc digital library project: Its goals and major achievements -- The MeDoc system — A digital publication and reference service for computer science -- Design and implementation of the MeDoc fulltext system -- Conception of the user agent — The user interface of the MeDoc-system -- Access to bibliographic data bases — The provider agents in MeDoc -- Provider selection — Design and implementation of the Medoc Broker -- Query transformation for heterogeneous provider systems in Medoc -- The MeDoc communication protocol -- The MeDoc library: Security aspects -- Cost models and accounting in MeDoc -- Ariadne, an interactive navigation and search system for computer science information on the world-wide web -- Grey literature and multiple collections in NCSTRL -- Digital publishing for conference proceedings on CD-ROM -- Books and journals in MeDoc — Experiences on bringing publications online -- Experiences in document conversions during the MeDoc project -- Digital books in MeDoc — A first analysis of usage patterns -- Use of MeDoc offerings in technical education -- The Stanford InfoBus and its service layers: Augmenting the internet with higher-level information management protocols -- Objectives, results and conclusions of the European Decomate project: Delivery of copyright material to end users.

This book coherently documents the results and experiences of a major digital library pilot effort, the MeDoc project (Multimedia Electronic Documents). This two-year project was initiated by the German Informatics Society (GI) and involved authors, publishers, librarians, and computer science departments. The prototype distributed digital library system developed during the initiative was operated in a nationwide trial for several months. The book presents the technical and operational results achieved during the project as well as input from foreign digital library activities. Besides professionals active in the area of digital library research and design, this book addresses librarians and others engaged in scientific publishing.