The SICS Digital Library initiative was run as a project in the Human-Machine Interaction and Language Engineering laboratory. The project was first suggested by Rainer Berling, the managing director of SICS, and initiated by Jussi Karlgren and Preben Hansen with first activities taken during 1997. The project was funded by various programs from SITI - the Swedish Instititue of Information Technology - and SICS, and spent a large portion of its productive time trying to secure the budget originally promised to it. In spite of the efforts on the part of the project, continued interest from external parties - both users and technology suppliers - and consistently positive technological reviews it was terminated in June 2000 due to lack of interest from the part of SITI.
The activities initiated under the Digital Library Initiative will in part continue under other projects.
For an historical expose over project plans see the project pages.