Information provision to the HE community in the UK is at a crossroads. A large amount of work has been done, with much progress made, on bringing a wide range of information sources, both metadata and full text, to the electronic reach of information users, whether researchers or teachers or students. The technical infrastructure in HE (and increasingly within FE) is pervasive, reliable and under constant dynamic development. In recent years much attention has been paid to the need for agreed standards to ensure optimum interoperability.

Yet the "information landscape", to borrow a phrase from UKOLN, is a confusing place for the user, full of signposts and arrows, but also frustratingly fraught with dead ends where U-turns need to be made and the search has to begin all over again. Users have found that they need a plethora of passwords to access various databases. They need to familiarise themselves with a new interface every time they access a new resource. They have to waste time re-keying the same search terms each time they look for an item in more than one database. They find information about existing materials and resources, and maybe even location information too, but they are still often far from actually handling the source material they want. For that, there is a need to arrange either physical access to the resource at the identified location or an inter-library loan request that will (eventually) bring the resource to them.

The overwhelming need now is for integration of the services in ways which help the user to make more efficient and cost-effective use of the rich resources available and which extend the potential user community for any given service through the simplification and integration process, thereby creating better value for money all round.