Managing Digital Library Components

Suleman, Hussein (2007) Managing Digital Library Components. In Proceedings Second Workshop on Foundations of Digital Libraries, Budapest, Hungary.

Abstract

Digital library systems based on components can provide advantages such as extensibility and flexibility, but at the cost of increased complexity. High-level tools can be used to manage this complexity but only if there are appropriate machine interfaces to the pool of components. This paper discusses the facilities that were deemed absolutely necessary in order to support a wide range of independently-developed high-level functions in supporting a DL system. The common thread underlying these management interfaces suggests extensions that could be incorporated into future open interfaces for digital library components, with minimal increases in complexity, thereby maintaining the advantages of a simple component model.