Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw

Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, Warsaw University (ICM), is a research centre in computational sciences, focusing in the areas of mathematical, natural and computational sciences, as well as networking and informational technology. It operates the leading scientific supercomputing centre in Poland. The centre has multi-year experience in provision of large scale Internet information and data services since 1994. The early experiences include setting up and maintenance of one of the largest software repositories in Europe (SunSITE in 1995), creation of the first and most popular Polish search engine in partnership with Infoseek Corp. (in 1996) and co-development of the currently most popular Polish search engine (Netsprint). ICM has also had extensive experience in Internet content replication techniques, being a founder and co-organizing a series of yearly International Web Caching and Content Replication conferences, playing an active role in TERENA's caching and indexing task forces, and establishing a countrywide caching hierarchy in Poland in 1998.

Since 1995 ICM is running a multi-terabyte national Virtual Library programme (with over 10,000 full text articles being downloaded daily) serving hundreds of scientific and research institutions in Poland. As a subproject, the countrywide Internet library catalogue is being developed, as well as a number of comprehensive databases of Polish academic and research journals. The Virtual Library includes a publicly accessible extensive collection of Polish mathematical journals. ICM coordinates countrywide licensing programs for access to bibliographical databases and for remote software licenses. Different databases and content repositories are being gradually integrated with the use of a custom built, high-performance resource indexing broker system. ICM is one of the partners of the Digital Repository Infrastructure for European Research (DRIVER) project, developing and providing the IT technology for DRIVER core infrastructure, including the indexing service, browsing service, authorisation and authentication service.