DECENTRALIZED MODELS FOR ONLINE LITERATURE RETRIEVAL — A FIELD EXPERIMENT — Online literature retrieval is offered to the academic users via a highly centralized model. In order to test the possibilities to decentralize online services a field experiment was carried out at six university departments. A few persons at each department were introduced to the basic management of literature retrieval and the supply of databases available to them. The interest for using the service was very high and most users were satisfied with the searches. However, many users had problems in making adequate formulations of their search questions. These difficulties were shown to be dependent on the amount of experience from literature retrieval and use of secondary sources as well as the level of education. In general the field experiment was successful both in terms of user saticfaction and the willingness to establish online service at the department level.