Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF) is an organisational and technological partnership between research libraries co-financed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education. DEFF's purpose is to advance the development of a network of electronic research libraries that makes available their electronic and other information resources to the patrons in a coherent and simple way. This is obtained partly through government funding and partly by joint purchase of licenses. The Danish Agency for Libraries and Media runs the secretariat of the partnership. Read more about DEFF here.

Strategy
The strategy of DEFF is to improve the end user's access to information through cooperation between the Danish special- and research libraries. The cooperation includes:

• Joint development in cases where cooperation will result in a greater advantage than the sum of local initiatives, and hereby a better and total utilization of the libraries' resources.
• Further development of the joint network of information resources.
• Collective dissemination of the research libraries' information resources to the public.

Target audience
The target audience of DEFF is primarily defined as the end-users of the libraries, but also includes the end users of research-based enterprises, science parks, and hospitals, plus the general public.

Initiatives
DEFF includes a range of projects and development tasks within IT, research, education and library development. The general purpose of these activities is to improve the use of IT concerning support of research and education. These projects are included in a number of programme areas. The four DEFF Programme areas are:

• Architecture & Middleware
• Information Provision
• Meeting the User 
• New Institutions

Finances
On the National Budget the average annual appropriation is fixed at approximately 20 mill. DKK.

For further information download the DEFF annual report 2008.