fax: 0441-798-3201; tel.: 0441-798-2543 0441-692434; hilf@merlin.physik.uni-oldenburg.de

The German  Physical Society is proud to be one  of the early founders
of the IuK Initiative for Information and Communication of the major
learned societies in Germany.

The IuK Initiative has the aim of
--coordinating the attempts of different  scientific fields,
-- introducing and ensuring the same standards,
--embedding the national projects into the internaional development,
--formulating the requirements for scientific work,
--installing, testing, evaluating and recommending new services.

Each year the annual conference is for all societies hosted by
one of them, last year the host was the German Society for
Education Science, with the Chairman Peter Diepold.

This year it is the pleasure of the German Physical Society
to host the meeting. Thus we asked the IuK-representative
of our society to put up the scientific programme together
with the scientific board recruited from all 10 societies of
the IuK.
We are thankful to Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler and his crew for
the local organisation.
And we thank in especial the University of Jena for its kind
hospitality.

The aim is to have the style of an international workshop
with full international presence, and we are very thankful
to our guests from abroad who have been recommended
by at least one of  the Learned Societies, let it be
Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology,  Education Science,
Sociology,  Psychology,
Information Science, Engeneering,
or  Physis.

I welcome the many representatives of Scientific Libraries,
Computer Centers or Multimedia Centers at Universies.
Their respective societies and the IuK Initiative have negotiated
to act coherently,  linking the scientists in charge for
naming their needs and the professional University institutions
for Information Services in general to realize and serve it.

I welcome the scientists from all Learned Fields in Germany
and all Universities and major research institutions.

I welcome the representatives of software companies,
providers. I is the first time that thecontact to them has been
approached for the annual meeting.

We hope that this meeting will help to embed the German
activities into the International developments.
We also hope that the internationl contacts will lead
to solid an detailed integration of the German
Management Systems  and projects  of Scientific Information into the
worldwide forming systems.

We think that it is important to keep the goods of the
'paper-oriented aera' (as Stevan Harnad put it):
one unique information scheme for all fields, with
the scientific journals as backbones.

In  new aera of digitized information we aim for exploiting its
advantages:
separation of processes, which were coupled in the past aera:

archiving from information for the actual scientific process,

distributing information from add-on service providing such as refereeing.

information content from information presentation

posting and intelligent retrieval.
 
The German Physical Society is playing an active role in the
IuK Initiative interdisciplinary project for Dissertations Online, funded by the
German Science foundation.
Already last year the assembly of deans of  Physics and Mathematics
have unanimously voted to install digital information on dissertations
on the net. We run a search engine.

We think that the scientists have to work on formulating their needs,
discuss them interdisciplinary and international, and test early on
protoypes.

As early as 1994 a plan for a country wide network for testing and evaluating
new prototypes and services has been proposed to the Science Ministry by the DPG.

As early as 1994 the DPG was actively present with its representatives and experts
at the famous Meeting of the American Physical Society APS at Los Alamos, USA
which we see as a forerunner to the scheme of this meeting.

The Executive Board (Vorstand) of the DPG has now decided to launch a major
programme
<<<<< hier sollte nun eine Schilderung Ihres grossen Vorhabens folgen, das koennen
Sie freihand  besser machen>>>>
to use the new means
--to boost the public acceptance of science,
--to increase the professional information of scientists,
--to distribute the recommendations and 'white books' with regard to specific topics
such as energy politics, atomic energy hazards, new technologies, etc.

Part of will be the :Physics Network World:, which the DPG together with the EPS
(European Physical Society) runs for the scientific community, and which may serve
as a major source for commercial add-on services.

Finally, let me thank you all for coming, it is now your turn to make it a success.
I hereby open the IuK99:Dynamic Documents.