Cornell University Library is the recipient of a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a three-year project to create an online repository for mathematics and statistics publications. Titled "Project Euclid," its primary mission is to support the transition of independent mathematics and statistics journals to the online environment.

Independent journals have long been very important as an affordable means of disseminating high-quality research in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. The majority of these journals, however, have faced economic tensions and technical hurdles in making a transition to a web-based publication. Project Euclid will help publishers of independent mathematics journals by creating an infrastructure that will empower them to publish on the World Wide Web, create economies of scale and increase their visibility by a combined online presence.

In Project Euclid, Cornell University Library (CUL) is collaborating with Duke University Press to set up an online repository -- a virtual "one-stop" web site where researchers and scholars will be able to access dozens of important titles in mathematics and statistics. The Euclid site represents a new model of scholarly communication, as it will support the entire span of scholarly publishing from preprints to the distribution of published journals. Project Euclid will also provide journal editors with a unique set of web-based publishing tools that will enable them to streamline their editorial and peer review processes and publish in a more timely and cost-effective manner.

Duke University Press publishes two leading math journals: Duke Mathematical Journal and International Mathematics Research Notices. CUL, one of the 10 largest academic research libraries in the nation, is internationally recognized for its innovation, rapid progress and expertise in digital library initiatives. And Cornell has strong mathematics and statistics departments, where more than 50 faculty members are editors for leading journals.

Among its many digitization projects, CUL has identified electronic projects in support of mathematics as a top priority. Nearly 10 years ago, 571 seminal mathematics works in the public domain from its collection were digitized in a pioneering imaging project. Scholars and researchers around the world have used the information on the Math Books Collection web site ( http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cdl-math-browse.html) and have ordered printed and bound copies of these books. Recently the "Scout Report for Science & Engineering," the premier biweekly selection of useful Internet sites for researchers, educators and students in the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering selected this site as one of exemplary interest.

CUL also has set up a mirror web site to Math, a major European resource, allowing the campus community and subscribers in the U.S. to more quickly access this online publication. A licensed database, Math is the electronic version of Zentralblatt fŸr Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete, the leading European indexing and reviewing service for the discipline.

At Cornell, Project Euclid is managed by Zsuzsa Koltay, CUL's coordinator of electronic publishing. For more information about Project Euclid, visit http://euclid.library.cornell.edu/project/ or contact Koltay at (607) 255-7964; e-mail: zk10@cornell.edu.