Towards a new paradigm of resource sharing The partnership between a mirror site and consortium in Taiwan

It is a tradition in libraries to offer scholarly materials for supporting research and education. In the digital age, it becomes both a challenging issue and an opportunity for libraries to provide electronic resources ofscholarly materials in networked environments. Owing to slow network traffic speed and traffic jams resulting from connection between the Internet and the Taiwan Academic Network, Academia Sinica has introduced a great number of electronic databases to its end users by applying mirroring technology. Academia Sinica also cooperates with other organisations and consortia in Taiwan to set up a new resource sharing paradigm for libraries. This case has so far proven to be a workable and practical solution with consortia’s support and coordination. Consequently the information providers and agents also get the expected profit under reasonable, affordable, and profitable principles.