If many people feed into the same, possible distributed database then the collection will grow, without institutions having to invest in the technological infrastructure or administration required to support an information gateway. By becoming Correspondents they will create a new role for themselves on the Internet, and be widely acknowledged as having an important part to play in the management of Internet information. Librarians will spend a few hours each week cataloguing from their desktops. We are particularly keen to find colleagues from mainland Europe who can submit resources written in other European languages. The gateway aims to point to resources from all European countries.
Country Correspondents can improve the geographical coverage of the collection.
For example, a correspondent from Sweden can focus on submitting resources created in Sweden and located on servers in Sweden. As more and more social scientists across Europe begin to publish material on the WWW, we hope the country correspondents can ensure that resources from all countries are added to the collection. Subject Correspondents can build up parts of the collection that have particular relevance for their users. For example, a law librarian might want to build up the legal resources section by becoming a Law Correspondent, or a librarian serving psychology researchers may want to focus on psychology resources. The Correspondent role is very flexible.