European Hosts: InfoLine — a new European online service

In the last two issues of Online Review we gave a report on the European Space Agency — Information Retrieval Service (IRS) and on the British Library — BLAISE service. In this issue, we continue our series on ‘European Hosts’ by describing InfoLine a new European online service. The creation of both IRS and, to a lesser extent, BLAISE predates the current European network developments and the significant growth of online usage in Europe. The principal reason for starting IRS was the need to meet the information requirements of the European Space Agency. BLAISE is an understandable extension of the British Library's significant involvement in cataloguing services, database creation and document delivery. InfoLine is a commercial corporation set up to develop profitably services in the online marketplace.