In the early 2003 the Italian Minister of  Health launched the proposal to set up a cooperation network amongst the Biomedical Research Libraries of the country in order to share resources and to reduce costs of scientific information access. An advisory board was established to elaborate a project and the final result was BIBLIOSAN, a research project started in December 2003 with the patronage and funding by the Ministry of Health itself. The project lasts for two years and is the first step towards the realization of a permanent and structured system of resource sharing and effective collaboration in the health libraries field.
There are 45 partners involved in, including all Scientific Institutes for Care and Research, Zooprophylactic Institutes and The National Health Institute.
The project have three main goals:
• to collect data about journals purchased by all partners and to set up a web based collective catalogue
• to enhance the circulation of scientific documentati on through a document delivery system starting from the catalogue location and using an appropriate tool
• to carry out a national biomedical consortium for the acquisition of journals and information resources
The first two aims were rapidly achieved and dating from May 2004 the system became fully operating. In January 2005 a contract was signed to assure the online access to about 900 scientific journals including a wide selection of the most relevant titles in biomedical field.
This is only the foundation stone for the construction of the consortium and the aim is to rapidly increase the number of online full text serial titles within the end of 2005.
The paper will focus the most relevant aspects of the project with also a glance at possible future developments such as the creation of an open access archive of Italian biomedical research or the inclusion of specific databases for patients.