Project description

Building a world-wide service network in informatics

The purpose of the 'FIS-I project', (German name in full: 'Fachinformationssystem Informatik'), is to design, build and operate a competence and service network for the field of informatics.

The project aims at providing experts from academia and industry, or members of the informed public, with comprehensive coverage and access to all scientific information dealing with all aspects of informatics. Access to the network and information system will be given via an internet portal (io-port.net).

io-port.net will provide central access to the knowledge in the field of informatics published world-wide. Another purpose is to structure and standardise publications with meta data and to ensure the sustainable availability of the stored information. A special aspect of the project is that the diversity of interests of the user groups and institutions involved in the publishing process, (for example: authors, libraries, special information centers, user groups), will be taken into account when it comes to designing io-port.net.

One priority of the FIS-I project is to integrate various collections of data which up to now had been available from different sources.

Another focus is on the development of the components required for a systematic data processing (meta data), and for quality evaluation of the relevant information items.

The objective is to guarantee effective and sustainable archiving of bibliographic information referring to all branches of informatics, and to safeguard reliable access to the publications. With a portal designed like the io-port.net, rapid, targeted searching and retrieval of relevant publications will be possible (one-stop shopping). Capabilities to be developed are: interlinked, cross-cutting searching of databases, and direct access to the relevant full-text documents via an interface to TIBORDER, a service offered by the TIB library, Hannover, for the provision of full-text documents in science and technology.

The list below shows the major tasks to be accomplished by the partners in this project:

• develop the portal, i.e. the architecture and software
  
• integrate the available databases
  
• coordinate the required input work
  
• gather internal and external information sources under one hyperlink interface
• eliminate duplicates by an effective duplication checking procedure
• ensure long-term archiving of secondary literature
• develop a bibliographic retrieval system
• establish a full-text supply system
• identify user groups and implement personalised views
• develop a dynamic, subject-specific search engine for the internet
• establish a user identification system, a customer file management and accounting system
• develop push services for automated display of topical information for special user groups
• establish generic interfaces to other offers and future projects in informatics

Institutions co-operating in this project are: Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI), represented by the University of Karlsruhe (Institut f. Angewandte Informatik und Formale Beschreibungsverfahren) and FIZ Karlsruhe; various scientists from the universities of Karlsruhe (Lehrstuhl, Informatik f. Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler), Munich (Lehrstuhl f. Effiziente Algorithmen), and Trier (Lehrstuhl Datenbanken und Informationssysteme).

There is also a close co-operation with SemIport (Semantic methods and tools for information portals), another research project supported by the BMBF.

For detailed information on the partners involved in the project, click here.