Electronic market: the roadmap for university libraries and members to survive in the information jungle

This contribution argues that electronic markets can serve as a powerful mechanism to entice providers to identify their customer base and to offer customer-oriented, high-quality and economical services and to induce customers to a more focused and price-conscious behavior. The paper claims that this should be particularly true for the provision and access to scientific literature where the tradition so far has been mostly free access by customers and non-transparent cost accounting and service procurement by university libraries. We report on a project for developing a technical network infrastructure that allows for a more cost-transparent access to scientific literature by campus users and attempts to add a competitive element to library services. Equally important, it provides added value to the users so that they can orient themselves in the vast expanses of scientific literature much faster and more economically. We cover three major elements of the infrastructure: user agents, traders and source wrappers.