Testing a digital library: User response to the core project

The Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment (CORE), a five‐year R&D project, was one of the earliest attempts to make a substantial volume of the text and graphics from previously published scholarly journals available to end‐users in electronic form, across a computer network. Since CORE dealt with material that had already gone through traditional print publication, its emphasis was on the process (and limitations) of conversion, the optimization of presentation, and use of the converted contents for readers. This article focuses on the user response to the system.