The cooperation between the participants origined from the Symposium on Current Development in STM Libraries, funded by Sino-German Center (China) and held in April 2004 in Chengdu, China, with 50 librarians from key STM libraries, 15 from Germany. In June 2005, the Seminar on Cooperation on Scientific Information between China and Germany was held in Hannover, funded by DFG. Both activities were coordinated by Professor Ye Jianzhong from NSL, China, and Director Uwe Rosemann from TIB, Germany.

Based on these achievements, led by NSL and TIB (Professor Xiaolin Zhang and Mr. Uwe Rosemann as Principal Investigators respectively), a group of Chinese and German libraries applied and were funded by Sino-German Center and DFG to form the Sino-German Digital Information Provision Partner Group, to exchange, research, and development new services. Among the parties were the National Library of China, NSTL, Shanghai Library, Tsinghua University Library, Peking University Library, Library of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and DNB, BSB, SUB Goettingen, subito, University Library of Constance, ZB MED from Germany. The tasks of the group included:

(1) Cross-Domain Information Services, with sub-tasks as Document Delivery Services, Primary Data and Portals, and Internet Resources.

(2) Retro-Digitization and Digital Curation, with sub-tasks as Retro-Digitization, and Digital Curation.

(3) Information Literacy

(4) Institutional Repositories & Open Access, with sub-tasks as Institutional Repositories, Open Access, and National Licensing.

Worked together, partners exchanged information and produced research reports on document delivery, integrated portal construction, digitization standards and workflows, distributed cooperative digitization, digital preservation, open access, national licenses, information literacy, etc. Partners have developed operational systems such as Subito China, Sino-German Agricultural Info Portal, Sino-German portal on Asian Studies, Open Access Promotion Portal. Partners organized seminars in Beijing, China (2007), Hannover, Germany (2008), and Kunming, China (2009). Detailed cooperation results can be reviewd from working reports for 2007, 2008, and 2009 respectively.

German National Library of Science and Technology, and National Library of Science, CAS co-sponsored the Sino-German Digital Information Service Symposium which was successfully held during 2007-2009. Nearly 80 experts from China and Germany took part in this symposium, especially, Mr. Reinhard Rutz from DFG and Mr. Chen Lesheng, Chinese Director of Sino-German Center for Research Promotion, participated in the overall process. Experts from China and Germany reported and summarized the developments of these sessions, showed the project achievements, discussed how to solve the existing problems in the progress at present, and the development plans in future based on learning from the successful experiences of each other.