DML-CZ: The objectives and the first steps Miroslav Bartoˇ sek, Martin Lhot´ ak, Jiˇ r´ ı R´ akosn´ ık, Petr Sojka, Martin ˇ S´ arfy Encouraged by the idea of the World Digital Mathematics Library and by digitization activities worldwide, the Czech Mathematical Society initiated the digitization project “DML-CZ: Czech Digital Mathematics Library” to ensure availability of mathematical literature which has been published throughout history in the Czech lands, in digital archival form. Five special- ized groups from different institutions cooperate to carry out the project. There are the first achievements as well as some questions that emerged in the course of the first eighteen months. In particular, the Metadata Ed- itor has been developed as a specialized software to facilitate the process of creation, revision and validation of metadata obtained in an automated way. 1 Motivation Several stimuli for the Czech mathematics digitization activity could be traced: The Czech Mathematical Society (CMS) has been involved in co- operation with Zentralblatt since 1996, when the Prague Editorial Unit was established under its auspices as one of the first external collaborating units. In 2002–2003 we skimmed digitization while contributing a little to the project ERAM by digitizing about 4 000 pages of the Jahrbuch ¨ uber die Fortschritte der Mathematik. In 2003, Bernd Wegner inspired the CMS to take part in the (unfortunately, not approved) DML-EU project coordi- nated by the European Mathematical Society. All this experience proved useful in 2004 when the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (AS CR) launched the national research and development programme Informa- tion Society. Encouraged by the idea of the World Digital Mathematics Library (WDML) [4] and by digitization activities worldwide, the CMS initiated the proposal of the digitization project “DML-CZ: Czech Digital Mathematics Library”. The aim was to ensure availability of mathematical literature which has been published throughout history in the Czech lands, in digital form. The project, proposed for the period 2005–2009, has been approved [3] and has already achieved its first promising results. 1