ARION is aiming to provide a new generation of Digital Library services for the searching and retrieval of digital scientific collections that reside within research and consultancy organisations. These collections contain data, programs and tools in various scientific areas and incorporate applications of different domains of knowledge. ARION advances the findings of previous studies in areas, such as, management of networked scientific repositories and metacomputing. It consolidates the work of international interoperability standard development to provide a system that is complementary to established scientific practices in these organisations. ARION will be a federated open system and will be developed in association with national data providers, scientific researchers and SME’s to ensure that the project meets their needs.