Ultrabright synchrotron source ELETTRA: first period of operation

Elettra, the biggest source of soft-x-ray in Europe and one of two brightest in the world, is officially operating as a user facility since the summer 1995. The source and the operating beam lines have reached and surpassed the design performances. The impact of this performances is already felt in experiments: new applications are possible which were very difficult or quite impossible with the previous generation of sources. We present a few specific results to illustrate this point, and some considerations on the feature development of the facility - primarily in view of its large and rapidly growing international use. (author)