IV SINM Antonio Marra & Bernd Wegner

SISTEMA INFORMATIVO NAZIONALE PER LA MATEMATICA
SINM 2000 : un modello di sistema informativo nazionale per aree disciplinari
Lecce, Martedì 3 ottobre 2000, ore 16.35

ANTONIO MARRA & BERND WEGNER
The LIMES (Large Infrastructure in Mathematics-Enhanced Services) project and ZBL
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LIMES is a project which is guided by the EMS and funded within the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5) of the European Community. The acronym LIMES stands for "Large Infrastructure in Mathematics - Enhanced Services". LIMES deals with the enhancement of Zentralblatt MATH to a European database in mathematics. The project fits into the horizontal programme "Improving human research potential and the socio-economic knowledge base" of the FP5, providing and improving access to research infrastructures. The duration of the project will be from April 2000 to March 2004.

The partners of the LIMES-project are: FIZ - Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe (Germany), UJF - Cellule de Coordination Documentaire Nationale pour les Mathématiques (France), Eidetica (The Netherlands), SIBA - University of Lecce (Italy), DTV - Technical Knowledge Centre & Library of Denmark (Denmark), USDC - University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), HMS – Hellenic Mathematical Society (Greece), TUB - Technical University of Berlin (Germany), and as the supervising society the EMS. The project co-ordinator will be FIZ.

The contracts for the funding of the projects have been signed in March 2000. The works started in time at April 1.

The objective of this project is to upgrade the database Zentralblatt MATH into a European based world class database for mathematics and its applications by a process of technical improvement and wide Europeanisation. Upgrading the existing database, improving the present system and developing a new, distributed system both for the input and output of the data are necessary to allow Zentralblatt MATH to use the latest developments and to anticipate on future developments of electronic technologies. This will make Zentralblatt MATH a world reference database, offering full coverage of the mathematics literature world-wide, including bibliographic data, reviews and/or abstracts, indexing, classification, excellent search facilities and links to offers of articles, with a European basis.

1) Improvement of content and retrieval facilities through sophisticated further development of the current data sets and retrieval programs.

2) Broader and improved access to the database via national access nodes and new data distribution methods. In particular, improvement of access for isolated universities in regions in economic difficulties and in associated states of Central and Eastern Europe where a mathematical tradition of excellence is under economic threat. Stimulation of usage for all kinds of research as well as for funding organisations before decision making by initial support of two national test sides.

3) Improved coverage and evaluation of research literature via nationally distributed editorial units, development of technologies for efficient database production (exemplified by two further European member states).

The LIMES project sets out to achieve these goals by stimulation of usage (national access nodes and centres for dissemination including development of adequate licensing models; links with offers of complete documents); better coverage and more precise evaluation of literature through improved update procedures (for the data-gathering, but also for data distribution to access points) via a network of distributed Editorial Units. Networked access to the database in these days is mainly via rapidly evolving WWW technologies, with high potential for further development of innovative access and retrieval methods, and improvements in the quality of data (e.g. author and source identification through data-mining techniques).

Contrary to the centralised American model, Zentralblatt MATH will be extended to a European research infrastructure with distributed sites (Editorial Offices and Access Nodes) in the member states. The EMS representing the scientific community concerned has promoted these ideas among the national societies and individual members.

Since EMS is member of Zentralblatt MATH's Editorial Board, it is guaranteed that the results of the project will be available for usage in further research infrastructure partnerships. Tools and methods developed during the project will be usable by project partners on a royalty free license basis.

Further results, documentation and information will be made publicly available. Commercial exploitation of results beyond European research infrastructure services will be considered.

SIBA Coordination, University of Lecce (SIBA-UNILE) is the Structure of the University of Lecce, Italy, that co-ordinates, manages and develops the Telematic Information System for Research and Education. SIBA co-ordinates the SINM project, which aims at the development of a National Information System for Mathematics which will allow the Italian mathematical community to have easy access to the bibliographic and full-text resources available in the libraries of the field, on-line and on CD-ROM.

SIBA Coordination is involved in particular in the WP3 workpackage of the LIMES Project, as well as in the WP0 and WP4 involving all the LIMES partners. Within the WP3 workpackage, SIBA Coordination will establish an editorial unit for Zentralblatt MATH in Italy, identifying and covering mathematical publications of the region, according to high reviewing standards and editorial policies. This will enhance the Zentralblatt MATH covering of italian publications, also by a more direct contact with editors and publishers. In this sense a number of italian serials not covered by ZMATH has just been discovered, and an updated list of italian serials has been produced.

SIBA will install basic technical facilities to start its input delivery as soon as possible and thereafter work on innovative tools for automating these processes (electronic reviewing). A model for continuous operation, including cost effectiveness considerations, will be developed.

SIBA is also involved in the new ZMATH production system development. In particular it will develop the “reviewers” module, that will be in charge of the management of the reviewers data (address, specific fields of interest, languages, etc.) for the discovering of the most suitable reviewer for a particular document to be reviewed.

SIBA has two members in the LIMES coordination: dr. Virginia Valzano in the Project Management Task Force and dr. Antonio Marra in the Scientific-Technical Management Task Force.

FIZ operates the central editorial office for Zentralblatt MATH http://www.zblmath.fiz-karlsruhe. de/, which, founded in 1931, is today the longest-running international abstracting and reviewing service in the field of pure, applied and industrial mathematics. Zentralblatt MATH covers the entire spectrum of mathematics and theoretical computer science with special emphasis on areas of applications and provides about 60.000 reviews per year.

As a consequence of this role FIZ will be engaged in all work packages of the project.

MDC provides mathematics research libraries and mathematics departments with technical assistance on computerised documentation. In 1999, the MDC released edbm/w3, the first module of the European Database Manager for Mathematics software. In LIMES MDC will be in charge of the extensive development of this software like integration of new tools for search, identification, display, and update, the development and integration of improved access control management, and it will help national access nodes with the development and installation of improved update procedures.

Eidetica is the most recent spin-off company of CWI. It was created by researchers in the Interactive Information Engineering theme, combining expertise in linguistics and mathematical clustering of dependency networks for textual domains. Eidetica will mainly develop new models and tools for identification of author and serial names (two of the most requested features from the user community), based on data-mining techniques, and other improvements of the retrieval process.

DTV was established in 1942 as the central library of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the national library for engineering and applied sciences in Denmark. The role of DTV will be twofold: 1. Setting up and running an editorial unit. The unit will be responsible for covering a number of journals and other sources to be defined and agreed by DTU/MATH/DTV and the co-ordinator. The unit will engage itself in experimenting with modern, electronic reviewing methods, especially with the results of the SIBA-UNILE system development in this area. 2. Establishing a raw data system for the editorial units. Following the agreement of the publishers, this data will be made available for LIMES in two ways: a) for end-user current awareness purposes through a special LIMES gateway added to the Current Awareness System of the EMS and to the Zentralblatt MATH database, b) for cataloguing reuse by the editorial units through the export of raw cataloguing data to the Zentralblatt editorial system.

The role of USDC will be to propagate the use of the database in Spain and to facilitate the access to it, first by installing a national site server and regularly updating the database and new software releases, and second by setting up a task group for stimulating the usage of the database by Spanish universities, research centers, and libraries. A network structure for information in mathematics will be developed, integrating Zentralblatt MATH with national information offers. This work will be undertaken in co-operation mainly with CESGA (Centro de Supercomputaciõn de Galicia) and RSME (Real Sociedad Matemática Espanola).

HMS, founded in 1918, has the purpose to encourage and contribute to the study and research of mathematics and its applications, as well as to improve mathematical education in Greece. HMS will apply a methodology similar to that of the partner USDC in a different environment.

TUB is one of the largest universities in Germany offering curricula for the full scale of engineering sciences. Through the members of its mathematics department, it has a traditional co-operation with Zentralblatt MATH by serving as consultants for the input to the database. In particular, the editor-in-chief of Zentralblatt MATH is member of that department, and he can look back on a 25 year period of experience in this position. TUB will co-operate with all partners providing them with continuous advice and caring about the evaluation of results. An important task for TUB will be the development of editorial tools.

As a partner in the Editorial Board of Zentralblatt MATH EMS has set up an Innovations Committee whose main task is to define and enact innovative features and procedures in Zentralblatt MATH. The EMS has two roles to play in the project: It represents the end-user and gives a pan-European framework to the project as a whole. In both roles, it will be part of the Project Management.

Dr. Antonio Marra
Responsabile tecnico Coordinamento SIBA
Università di Lecce
Edificio "La Stecca", Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce
tel. 0832-320261/2; fax 0832-320261
e-mail: siba@unisalento.it