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Henry M. Gladney[1], Edward A. Fox[2], Zahid Ahmed[3], Ron Ashany[4], Nicholas J. Belkin[5], and Maria Zemankova[6]
[1]IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California 95120-6099, gladney@almaden.ibm.com,
[2]Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24601-0106, fox@fox.cs.vt.edu,
[3]San Diego Supercomputer Center, Univ. of Calif., La Jolla, California 92093-9784, ahmed@sdsc.edu,
[4]National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia 22230, rashany@nsf.gov,
[5]Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, belkin@pisces.rutgers.edu,
[6]Mitre Corporation, McLean, Virginia 22102, mzemanko@mitre.org
At the IEEE CAIA'94 Workshop on Intelligent Access to On-Line Digital Libraries we began discussing requirements and architecture for digital library systems. This paper provides a first summaryof the results of our deliberations, analysis, and synthesis.
We consider the context, definitions and characteristics of digital libraries and then propose using an architecture for such distributed computing services built on the concepts of resource managers and application enablers. Our taxonomy for digital libraries calls for a base of file systems and database managers, a storage subsystem for library items (implemented as resource managers), and a higher layer of document managers (implemented as application enablers). Examples of the latter include Mosaic or a folder manager. Many classes of modules are needed to build these systems. For a particular situation, it is essential to identify the requirements. As a guide, we outline some of the requirements relating to the document storage services and to catalogs that help with access. We conclude with discussions of document markup, links, interchange, and a reminder to build upon the lessons learned with previous libraries and with other distributed information systems, as we develop the first generation of digital libraries.
Keywords: Application enablers, architecture, digital libraries, distributed resource managers, document managers, requirements, storage subsystem, taxonomy.
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