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The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) has joined a multilateral alliance to govern a quickly growing online access point to the world's research information - WorldWideScience.org. Officials representing 38 countries recently met in Seoul, Korea, to move WorldWideScience.org from a partnership-based organisation to an organisation governed by a multinational alliance.

The alliance began as a bilateral ‘intent to partner’ agreement, signed in January 2007. Other nations were then invited to join the collaboration and the transition to multilateral governance began in June 2007 at the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) General Assembly in Nancy, France. It was then formally established to serve as the permanent governance structure for WorldWideScience with eleven founding member organisations representing 38 countries. In addition to the member countries, ICSTI will serve as a member and primary sponsor for WorldWideScience.

The NRC Canada Insitute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) was part of the delegation that signed the ‘founding and purpose’ document for the WorldWideScience Alliance restating the Alliance's goal to provide a single, sophisticated point of access to diverse scientific resources and knowledge from nations around the world. This alliance is projected to further enhance Canada's position as a leader in science and technology information and strengthens the nation’s innovation system by enabling access to world of information.

The WorldWideScience Alliance website will provide visitors with free real-time search of national scientific databases, such as NRC-CISTI's collection, the collection of the Canadian Agriculture Library (CAL), as well as the NRC-CISTI-Myilibrary eBook Loans collection, from around the globe. WorldWideScience will allow users to query from over 200 million pages of science and technology information that are not available through popular search engines.

Dr. Wendy A. Warr

Wendy Warr & Associates

6 Berwick Court, Holmes Chapel

Cheshire, CW4 7HZ, England

Tel./fax +44 (0)1477 533837

wendy@warr.com http://www.warr.com