Background

The service is a development of the SAPIENS project which aims to assist small-scale Scottish publishers of arts and humanities periodicals to enter the online environment. There were various reasons for the establishment of the project;

• to sustain small-scale Scottish publishing
• to promote Scottish research and culture in the global information environment
• to add to the diversity of digital content

The project has worked with a number of publishers to explore the issues surrounding electronic publishing. It established a pilot demonstration service delivering sample content, which has evolved into the current operational service.

	E-texts and presentations about electronic journals and scholarly publishing in the catalogue of the SLAINTE service.
	The SAPIENS electronic publishing service was initially funded by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council and has been developed by the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde.