EU opportunities for electronic publishing support
"Frankfurt goes electronic" was the catchphrase of the Frankfurt Book Far in 1993. In the context of the Fair's electronic publishing activities, Directorate-General XIII of the European Commission held a highly successful meeting of heads of publishing houses which resulted in a study entitled "New opportunities for publishers in the information services market" which was conducted under the IMPACT programme. At this year's Fair, the Commission made a presentation entitled "EU opportunities for electronic publishing support" which outlined the Commission's activities in this rapidly evolving area. Mr. Frans de Bruine, Director of Directorate-General XIII/E in Luxembourg, outlined the changing business environment for the European publishing community. In his view, the main messages of the 1993 study are still valid, namely that publishers need to get on the learning curve for new information technologies early and maintain their awareness. The Commission also presented details of the Telematics Application programme under the Fourth Framework Programme which was agreed by the Research Council on 29 September 1994. The programme will focus on bringing multimedia applications into healthcare, education, research networks and administrations. The overall aim is to improve efficiency in public services and access for future network users, as well as job creation in the new information industry which is developing. DG XIII/E of the European Commission manages three sectors of the Telematics programme, which are mainly concerned with digital information content. The main R&D areas which are of interest to publishers are information engineering, language engineering and libraries telematics.