in-Browser Digital Library Services

Suleman, Hussein (2007) in-Browser Digital Library Services. In Kovács, László, Norbert Fuhr and Carlo Meghini, Eds. Proceedings Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 11th European Conference (ECDL 2007), pages 462-465, Budapest, Hungary.

Abstract

Service models for digital libraries have looked into how services may be decomposed into modules and components for greater flexiblity. These models are, however, mostly aimed at server-side applications. With the emergence of Ajax and similar techniques for processing XML documents within a Web browser, it has now become feasible for a browser to perform far more of the computational tasks traditionally encompassed in server-side DL services. Among other advantages, moving computation to the client can result in improved performance and scalability. As a new twist on service oriented computing, it is argued in this paper
that digital library services can be provided partially or wholly through applications that execute client-side. Two case studies are provided to illustrate that such in-browser services are feasible and in fact more powerful and flexible than the traditional server-side service model.