Electronic Resource Database (ERDB) : present and perspective(<Special feature>Future of scholarly communication)

In this paper, the current status of the electronic resources management database (ERDB) project is reported. Also the similar foreign projects and the future perspective of this project are described. It is a real challenge for university librarians to deal with the issue of electronic resources management. In order to tackle with this difficult problem the National Institute of Informatics has launched the ERDB project together with a number of university libraries. The ERDB is basically a knowledge base for managing foreign and domestic electronic resources. Also license and contract information from participating libraries will be integrated into this database. It will help librarians to manage electronic resources more efficiently. One of the issues relating the development of ERDB is to build reliable data continuously. However if this issue is overcame, it is expected to play a major role as a metadata infrastructure of electronic resources in the scholarly communication system.