Information Services for Mathematics in the Internet (math-net) Information Offers for Mathematics in the Internet

The present paper gives a brief description of the Math-Net project which is carried out by nine mathematical institutions in Germany, supported by Deutsches Forschungsnetz (DFN) and Deutsche Telekom. The project aims at setting up the technical and organizational infrastructure for eecient, inexpensive and user-driven information services for mathematics. With the aid of active (structured retrieval mechanisms) and passive (proole services) components, electronic mathematical information in Germany will be made available to the scientist at his workplace. The emphasis is put on information about publications, software and data collections, teaching and research activities, but also on organizational and bibliographical information. Decentral organization structures, distributed search systems as well as the use of meta-information (metadata) in accordance with the Dublin Core (hopefully) guarantee a longterm, high-quality repository of data. The well-known mathematical software and data collection netlib will be used as an example to illustrate how such a collection can be adapted to Math-Net. An integration of netlib into HyperWave ooers additional perspectives and functionalities. The Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV) and the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum f ur Informationstech-nik Berlin (ZIB) have been developing, discussing and publishing ideas and concepts for a distributed system of information and communication for quite some time now 1]. Despite little support by oocial authorities (a corresponding program by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology (BMBF) was published in mid-1996 | following years of discussion { and has not taken shape yet) quite a number of initiatives have been brought under way in German mathematics. All mathematical departments and research institutes in Germany, the DMV itself, and many of its special interest groups have established WWW-servers. This also applies to several special research projects supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG) and BMBF-supported research projects jointly carried out with partners in industry. These servers ooer information of (still) varying quality and completeness on topics such as Publications: preprints and technical reports, PhD and habilitation theses, selected diploma theses in full text;