Context:
Access to information is quite important in society. These days our e-society is more and more dependent on digital information accessible through the Internet and the WWW.

Problem statement:
We consider three target groups of persons and organizations involved in information discovery and access:
1. developers of information sources,
2. developers and managers of libraries and other information services that assist users to access information sources,
3. end-users of information services and information sources.
Of course in reality these groups overlap and borders are not sharp. In fact all of us are information users. Probably members of each group participate to this conference.
Working within a limited time budget and financial budget, how can we improve discovery of relevant information?

Methodology:
This tutorial is mainly based on professional experience, published literature and empirical research in the context of academic and scientific information services.

Findings, suggestions and recommendations:
Several topics are presented that deserve attention in order to improve discovery of information:
1. From print to digital,
2. Disintermediation,
3. Merging of databases,
4. Federated search,
5. Link generators,
6. Advanced commercial discovery services,
7. The importance of free discovery services,
8. Open access,
9. Enhancing retrieval with metadata,
10. Image searching,
11. Web and Search Engine Optimization,
12. The social web, and
13. Information literacy of users.
Each topic is first introduced and then related recommendations are formulated towards members of the three target groups.
So ideally, without time limitations, the complete tutorial would be structured as a matrix with 13 rows for the topics and 3 columns for the target groups.
In practical reality however, the time available is limited. Therefore we start with a short general introduction and interaction with the audience; then the tutorial will be condensed and adapted to the profile and interest of the participants.

Keywords:
Information retrieval, access to information, disintermediation, federated search, meta-search, aggregation, Internet, WWW, management, e-publishing, digital libraries, open access
 

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