Progress has not been easy, but the efforts of a special Working Group will soon bear their first fruit. Your company has identified an opportunity to create an innovative medical application, using a new material developed by the aerospace industry. You will probably start by asking personal contacts for ideas and information. You may conduct a literature search at national level. But you will almost certainly not attempt a full search of research databases in other Member States, even though most of these are now accessible via the Web.
Language is an issue.
A much greater obstacle, however, is that each database must be interrogated separately, using a different user interface. Neither the user's queries, nor the results returned by the databases, are structured in a standard way. By bringing catalogue data together in one place, it will enable users to identify relevant resources from 30 key research databases with a single query. At low cost, making maximum use of existing resources, the ERGO pilot represents a pragmatic first step towards the 'one-stop shop' for European research information envisaged by the ERGO Working Group. In April of this year the Working Group, which includes representatives from almost all Member States, produced its recommendations.