Gensthaler: How Many Small Libraries Can Be a Large Library

The success of the Internet has caused a significant change in the way of literature supply. Not only traditional libraries, booksellers and publishing houses have begun to enter the new digital world and offer their services world-wide, completely new information providers have been developed such as digital libraries, delivery services, citation services, and bibliographic databases. The amount of knowledge and information available world-wide grows every day. However, very few people will be able to access all the information that is available, since the information is distributed among a large number of computers and databases. People need assistance to gain the whole utility from the new situation. The idea presented in this paper is to integrate library and information services worldwide, so that they build a large virtual library with different services, offering the user a uniform access to the system.

An Agent-Oriented Approach to the Integration of Information Sources

Abstract. The success of the Internet and the World Wide Web opened new ways of information supply. While more and more information sources become available, people are faced with the problem of information overload. New kinds of information systems are needed. They give people searching for information the opportunity to participate in the new development and profit from the new information sources that become available through the Web. A special challenge for Web information system modeling arises from the openness of the system: Everything is liable to change, and information sources come and go without further notice. In this paper, we present an approach to a flexible information system that is able to adapt to a dynamic environment. We present the agent-oriented architecture of the information system and the realization of this system in the application domain of scientific literature.