PricewaterhouseCoopers Subsidy and Technology Consultants:

PricewaterhouseCoopers Luxembourg (PwC), the co-ordinator of the CORES project, is part of the world-wide PricewaterhouseCoopers network of Audit and Business Advisory Services. It provides specialised technical and management advice to government and industry in the field of industrial innovation. Expertise includes specifically: Risk Management, E-business and E-government; information technology and new media; (project) management; and strategic planning of research and development assurance.

MTA SZTAKI

MTA SZTAKI, the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1972. Currently it is the largest institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) for research and development in the fields of computer sciences and automation. The present staff consists of about 320 employees, out of which about 250 are university graduates.

Since its early years of foundation, the Institute has been undertaking industrial application projects, as well. The main fields of target research and development are as follows:

• local and wide area computer networks

• distributed information management systems, groupware systems

• World Wide Web and digital library systems

• information and banking systems, office automation

• real-time industrial supervision systems and industrial process control

• expert- and knowledge-based systems

• CAD, CAM, CIM applications (surface modelling, cell simulation) and robotics

• decision-support systems

• software quality assurance

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is Europe's leading research organization for applied research. Following the merger with GMD Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH in Sankt Augustin, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains 56 research institutes and a staff of 11,000 distributed over all sixteen of the German Laender, where they carry out research and development projects on a contract basis on behalf of private industry, the service sector and government.

The Birlinghoven Library of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, in addition to maintaining an extensive print collection of scientific journals and serving as an official publisher both in print and online, promotes the uptake of distributed and metadata-based repository technologies among Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft institutes. Together with UKOLN and the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Birlinghoven Library has been a partner in the European project SCHEMAS (2000-2002), which has played a leading role in promoting good-practice methods for publishing and harmonizing metadata application profiles. With the addition of SZTAKI, an institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science, this work is continuing in the European project CORES.

UKOLN

UKOLN is a national centre of expertise in network information management. It provides policy, research and awareness services to the UK library and information communities.

UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives & Libraries (the organisation succeeding the Library and Information Commission), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.