The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) grew up with and has been riding the waves of the Information Age, closely monitoring and anticipating the needs of its end-users. By now, all professional astronomers are using the ADS on a daily basis, and a substantial fraction have been using it for their entire professional career. In addition to being an indispensable tool for professional scientists, the ADS also moved into the public domain, as a tool for science education. In this paper we

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... l highlight and discuss some aspects indicative of the impact the ADS has had on research and the access to scholarly publications. The ADS is funded by NASA Grant NNX09AB39G