Virtual Library and LitLink

What is a "virtual library"? A "virtual library" can be an Internet site. Like a small bookshelf, this can consist of a few links and documents or of sites from major organizations trying to present comprehensively the information about an area, with links, references, journals, excerpts of books, tables and graphics.

Her are some examples from a search in Alta Vista over "virtual library":

Inspire Virtual Library Homepage

Indiana's virtual library - Offering cover-to-cover full-text for over 2000 general interest, business, academic, health and childrens publications ...
URL: www.inspire-indiana.net

surfactant: The Surfactants Virtual Library

A comprehensive virtual library containing over 1100 links to surfactant and detergent related web sites, with information on surfactant phenomena ...
URL: www.surfactants.net/

The alchemy web site and virtual library

90 megabytes online of information on alchemy in all its facets. Divided into over 1300 sections and providing tens of thousands of pages of text,...
URL: www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html

The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Chemistry

Chemistry. Please send additions, corrections, or comments to mhbarker@liv.ac.uk. CONTENTS. WWW Chemistry Sites. Academic Institutions || Non-profit...
URL: http://www.liv.ac.uk/Chemistry/Links/links.html

The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: US Government Information Sources

National Technology Transfer Center. [ Executive Branches | Executive Departments | Independent Agencies | Other Government ] Search: This INDEX of...
URL: www.nttc.edu/gov_res.html

The "virtual library" can be a collection of tools and scripts, i.e.:

Web Developer's Virtual Library: Encyclopedia of Web Design Tutorials, Article

WDVL is an free encyclopedia of java, HTML, javascript, cgi, dhtml, XML, perl, web design and domain name tutorials and resources....
URL: www.stars.com/

Electronic journals on-line or on CD-ROM can be considered a "virtual library". Science Direct for instance, is Elseviers' entrance to over 2000 electronic journals.  

A real library has infrastructure functions that go beyond providing books and journal, be it in electronic or in any other form. One needs powerful software like LitLink to mimic a real library.

A library provides:

• catalogues
• help for finding items
• distribution service
• copying and fax service
• learning and reading environment

What we need first is a good catalogue, search engine, or other entrance to the electronic content. This is yet an unsolved problem on the Internet. The search engines are most the time inadequate for research-oriented problems. MDL offers an elegant solution. All of MDL's databases can be searched by the most sophisticated methods  that ORACLE provides, plus structure and reaction oriented searches. All the databases are LitLink enabled. This means when you point to a reference you are automatically transferred to the original literature or, if you have no access or have not licensed the on-line literature, you are linked to a document distribution service. Bayer has presented on the 1999 European MDL Users' Group Meeting its copying and fax distribution service that was developed with LitLink Pro. In this way Bayer handles daily thousands of requests for copying documents.

Hopefully, the books never will disappear and we still have to wait  some time for the electronic book. However, they are making progress controlling ink on paper like the pixels on an LCD display. (Switchable Reflections Make Electronic Ink,

Augmenting a real library with a "virtual library" is the goal to provide the information needs for tomorrow.