We are delighted to present the ECDL 2004 Conference proceedings from the 8th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital - braries at the University of Bath, Bath, UK. This followed an impressive and geographicallydispersedseriesof locationsfor previousevents: Pisa(1997),H- aklion(1998),Paris(1999),Lisbon (2000),Darmstadt(2001),Rome (2002),and Trondheim (2003). The conference re?ected the rapidly evolving landscape of digital libraries, both in technology developments and in the focus of approaches to implem- tation. An emphasis on the requirements of the individual user and of diverse and distributed user communities was apparent. In addition, the conference p- gramme began to address, possibly for the ?rst time, the associated themes of e-research/e-scienceand e-learning and their relationship to digital libraries. We observed increasing commonality in both the distributed information archit- tures and the technical standards that underpin global infrastructure devel- ments. Digital libraries are integral to this information landscape and to the creation of increasingly powerful tools and applications for resource discovery and knowledge extraction.
Digital libraries support and facilitate the data and information ?ows within the scholarly knowledge cycle and provide essential - abling functionality for both learnersand researchers. The varied and innovative research activities presented at ECDL 2004 demonstrate the exciting potential of this very fast-moving ?eld. The 148 papers, 43 posters, 5 panels, 14 tutorials and 4 workshops subm- ted this year were once again of the highest quality.