Urania, a Linked, Distributed Resource for Astronomy

Above all, the electronic information environment is inter- linked. When done eectively, links knit together the scholarly references, citations and data sources for the user as never before, bringing the whole web of distributed information resources right to the reader's desktop. A certain amount of infrastructure and degree of cooperation is needed to make this happen eectively. The eld of astronomy and astrophysics now benets from the development of such an infrastructure, which has been named Urania. Although Urania has been working eectively for three years, astronomy's growing needs for greater breadth of coverage will force changes to be made in the Urania infrastructure.