A component assembly approach to digital library systems

With the advent of the Internet came the promise of global information access. In keeping with this promise, Digital Libraries (DLs) began to emerge across the world as a method of providing structured information to their users. These DLs are often created using proprietary monolithic software that is usually difficult to customise and extend. The Open Digital Library (ODL) project was created to demonstrate that DLs can be built as a network of components instead of as monolithic systems. Although the ODL approach has largely been embraced by the DL community, it is not without a few shortcomings. This paper introduces a graphical user interface and its associated framework for creating DLs from distributed components, consequently addressing a number of the limitations of ODL-like systems, as well as presenting a novel and generic approach for creating component-based systems. This system was subject to a user-based evaluation to confirm its utility and provide insights into possible extensions

A Digital Library Component Assembly Environment

Digital libraries (DLs) represent an important evolutionary step towards accessing structured digital information. DLs are often built from scratch or by using proprietary monolithic software that is often difficult to customise and extend to meet changing requirements. Researchers are beginning to realise that this is not an ideal solution and as a result, are creating component suites and accompanying protocols to encourage the creation of modular DLs. Despite the introduction of component models, it is not immediately apparent how they can be seamlessly assembled to produce diverse, yet fully functional, component-based digital library systems without knowledge of the underlying protocols. This dissertation presents a graphical user interface and its associated framework for creating DL systems from distributed components, consequently shielding DL architects from the complexity of using components models and taking advantage of the inherent benefits of the component programming paradigm. The framework introduced in this dissertation was designed to be generic enough to be adopted for the assembly of a variety of component-based systems over and beyond the digital library community. After being tested on over thirty inexperienced users and modelling a number of existing DL systems, graphically assembling distributed components has been shown to be a viable approach to simplify the creation of modular DLs from a pool of heterogeneous components

A Digital Library Component Assembly Environment

With the advent of the Internet came the promise of global information access. In keeping with this promise, Digital Libraries (DLs) began to emerge across the world as a method of providing structured information to their users. These DLs are often created using proprietary monolithic softwarethat is often difficult to customise and extend. The Open Digital Library (ODL) project was created to demonstrate that DLs can be built as a network of components instead of as monolithic systems. Although the ODL approach has largely been embraced by the DL community, it is not without a few shortcomings. This paper introduces a graphical user interface and its associated framework for creating DLs from distributed components, consequently addressing a number of the limitations of ODL, as well as presenting a novel and generic approach for creating component-based systems

A component assembly approach to digital library systems

With the advent of the Internet came the promise of global information access. In keeping with this promise, Digital Libraries (DLs) began to emerge across the world as a method of providing structured information to their users. These DLs are often created using proprietary monolithic software that is usually difficult to customise and extend. The Open Digital Library (ODL) project was created to demonstrate that DLs can be built as a network of components instead of as monolithic systems. Although the ODL approach has largely been embraced by the DL community, it is not without a few shortcomings. This paper introduces a graphical user interface and its associated framework for creating DLs from distributed components, consequently addressing a number of the limitations of ODL-like systems, as well as presenting a novel and generic approach for creating component-based systems. This system was subject to a user-based evaluation to confirm its utility and provide insights into possible extensions

New Directions in Digital Library Componentisation

The Open Digital Library project was created as an experimental framework to investigate component architectures for digital libraries. Its primary objectives were to determine if a model based on simplicity could be devised to form the basis for implementation of a wide range of typical digital library services. Initial results show that simplicity is possible, but there has been scepticism about the extension of OAI-PMH and concern over the increase in complexity as a result of breaking up historically monolithic systems into smaller components. Current work on the ODL project includes efforts to address these concerns and develop the model further to support issues faced in production environments, such as configuration, installation and redeployment. Based on feedback from digital library developers, the next generation of the ODL framework is based on an updated component architecture that is being developed independently of OAI-PMH, but influenced by emerging best practices such as XML encapsulation of records and Web Service-based interfaces. To address the increased complexity of componentised systems, the DL-in-a-Box project is documenting and packaging components for wider use and better understanding among developers. In addition, a parallel project is developing a visual environment for graphically composing digital library components into larger systems. In addition to the visual aspect, this project also is developing a generalised system for remote configuration of components, enabling a seamless shift from componentised to distributed componentised digital libraries. As a natural progression from current efforts, future work will involve the packaging of such componentised digital libraries into complete installable and configurable units. While all these efforts are experimental, it is hoped that the lessons learnt will contribute to the establishment of community-based standards for component-level interoperability. Ultimately, developers can be provided with a collection of right-sized solutions with the added advantage that their systems will be simple, open, extensible and reusable. Flexible digital libraries then can be built as networks of simple components, with more effort being expended on interesting services rather than basic infrastructure