Un gran proyecto de cooperación internacional: la Biblioteca Digital de Matemáticas

• Main Author: Macias-Virgos, Enrique
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: H. Information sources; supports; channels; HP. e-resources; DI. Science libraries; DML
• Online Access: http://eprints.rclis.org/4284/; http://eprints.rclis.org/4284/1/ArtDigit_v6.pdf

Since long ago, the professional activity of mathematicians depends on the bibliographic searches and queries. For nearly 2500 years, the essential publications on mathematics have been passed from generation to generation. With the new electronic tools we are used to have materials, information and data on our desk almost instantaneously. Yet the resources available in digital form are only a small part of the enormous cultural and scientific heritage of Mathematics. With the beginning of the twenty-first century, an ambitious idea has been taking shape: digitize all the mathematical literature of all time, to create a giant international mathematical community. A huge cooperation project worldwide, with an estimated duration of 10 to 15 years and a cost of more than 100 million euros, to convert 50 million pages into electronic format, accessible from anywhere in the world. In this article, which is a summary of various documents that the RSME (Royal Spanish Society of Mathematics, http://www.rsme.es), we inform about the benefits and drawbacks of the DML (Digital Mathematical Library) project, the steps that have been taken, and the participation of the RSME in the European team which is preparing it.