Digital Library Architecture: An overview

BABAN KUMBHAR
106Librarian
Dada Patil Mahavidyalaya, Karjat, Dist Ahmednagar
E-mail:[email protected]
Abstract

Digital library is system which depends on many technologies and technologies are changing
very fast. This paper discusses the components of digital library, guidelines for designing digital
library. Brief idea of Architecture of Alexandria Digital Library (ADL), Architecture of a Virtual
Research Digital Library and Architecture of Greenstone Digital Library has been given. A
digital library can have multi-tier architecture. Different digital libraries follow different
architectures and models.

1. INTRODUCTION

Digital libraries are integral part of learning environment. It is a crucial component of universal
information infrastructure adopting current information and communication technology. Digital
Libraries are networked collections of digital text, documents images, sound, data, software and
many more that are the core of today’s Internet and tomorrows universally accessible digital
repositories of all human Knowledge. A digital library is a library in which material is stored in
digital format and accessible by computers it is type of information retrieval system. Digital
library is a collection and dissemination of digital objects / items to meet user’s needs according
to their requirements.

According to Digital Library Foundation (DLF)

“Digital libraries are organization that provides the resources, including specialized staff, to
select, structure, offer intellectual access, to interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of and
ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital work so that they are readily and
economically available for use by a defined community.”

William Arms (2000) defined digital library as:

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 “Managed collection of information, with associated services, where the information is stored
in digital formats and accessible over a network"

2. Fundamentals of Digital Library Design

To develop a digital library system, the following criteria can be considered:
1. Low cost, including all hardware and software components;
2. Technically simple to install and manage;
3. Robust
4. Scalable
5. Open and inter-operable
6. Modular
7. User Friendly
8. Multi-user (including both searching and maintenance);
9. Multimedia digital object enabled; and
10. Platform independent (including both client and server components).

2. GUIDELINES FOR DIGITAL LIBRARY DESIGN

The following aspects can be considered as a guideline for the development of the digital library
architecture.
1. Service driven
The architecture for the digital library must be driven by the services it provides and tools required
for delivering the service
2. Open architecture
The architecture of the digital library must be open, extensible and support interoperability among
heterogeneous, distributed systems.
3. Scalability
The digital library architecture must be robust, scalable and reliable in a high transaction rate
production setting thousands of users with a wide variety of backgrounds and information needs
4. Preservation
The digital library architecture must ensure persistent access to resources of the digital library,
addressing such issues as naming, digital archiving and digital preservation.
5. Privacy

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The digital library architecture must be sensitive to privacy issues and support both anonymous and
customized access to resources
6. Practicality
The digital library architecture should represent a flexible and practical approach to standards,
recognizing the need to balance the level of information collection with economic constraints
7. Modularity
The digital library architecture should represent a mix of new technology and legacy pieces, all of
which must inter operate while involving at different rates.
8. Time frame
The time frame required to plan for system migrations in the next year as well as planning for
a technology generation framework should be approximately 3 to 5 years.
9. Client support
The architecture should support a base line level of services, which can be accessed with common
desktop configuration and software. Certain higher level services may require proprietary clients but
the support of these clients should be determined by DL tool and services group.

4. COMPONENTS OF DIGITAL LIBRARY

Digital library framework permits many different computer systems to coexist. The key components
are shown in the figure below. They run on a variety of computer systems connected by a computer
network, such as the Internet.
4.1. User Interfaces
We have to use two user interfaces: one for the end-users of the digital library, the other for digital
librarians and system administrators who manage the collections. Each user interface is in two parts.
A standard Internet browser is used for the actual interactions with the user. This can be Netscape
Navigator, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera. The browser
connects to client services, which provide intermediary functions between the browser and the other
parts of the system. The client services allow the user to decide where to search and what to retrieve;
they interpret information structured as digital objects; they negotiate terms and conditions, manage
relationships between digital objects, remember the state of the interaction, and convert among the
protocols used by the various parts of the system.

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 Fig: Major system components

4.2. Repository
Repositories store and manage digital objects and other information. A large digital library may have
many digital repositories of various types, including modern repositories, legacy databases, and Web
servers. The interface to this repository is called the repository access protocol (RAP). Features of
RAP are explicit recognition of rights and permissions that need to be satisfied before a client can
access a digital object, support for a very general range of dissemination of digital objects, and an
open architecture with well defined interfaces.
4.3. Handle System
Handles are general-purpose identifiers that can be used to identify Internet resources, such as digital
objects, over long periods of time and to manage materials stored in any repository or database.
When used with the repository, the handle system receives as input a handle for a digital object and
returns the identifier of the repository where the object is stored.

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4.4. Search System
The design of the digital library system assumes that there will be many indexes and catalogs that can
be searched to discover information before retrieving it from a repository. These indexes may be
independently managed and support a wide range of protocols.
5. Notional Architecture
At notional level, data and metadata and meta-object are considered. Data are library materials in the
traditional libraries where as digital library deals with digital information or data and metadata is data
about object in the digital library. The traditional card record is an example of metadata for
traditional library. A meta-object is an object that provides references to a set of digital objects. In its
simplest form, a meta-object is a list of handles of other digital objects. For example, a meta-object
for an anthology is a digital object that lists all the poems. An important example of a meta-object is
a digital object that lists all converted versions of a specific physical item. Digital objects are kept for
defining the metadata (Data about data). The designing of metadata is important for searching and
retrieval of information. Most of the integrated library automation software takes care of the process
of defining metadata. The metadata are entered in fields. This software indexes all the fields
according to the requirement of users and the system administrators

6. Operational System

At operational architecture level, it is important how information flow is managed through the
system's components. Digital library will be a collection of disparate systems and resources
connected through a network, and integrated within one interface, most likely a Web interface or one
of its descendants. These resources may reside on different systems and in different databases; they
would appear as though they were one single system to the users of a particular community. So for
both contemporaneous and retrospective search and retrieval of information, the digital library
service must provide information interoperability in middleware. And for this some common
standards will be needed which will facilitate cross domain searches and retrieval.
7. Technical System

At technical level we have to think about the functional component. The metadata is for content and
is added to the digital library. It provides information about the content. So, Metadata and data must
be bound together logically, and there must be a robust underlying technology to manage the logical
connection through time, across platforms, and over geographical separations, all on a networked,
distributed system. It describes major functional areas that taken together provide necessary

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components to build robust, scalable and interoperable digital library applications and services with
the resulting digital objects.
Functional Components:
1. Hardware (Servers, PCs (Clients), Modems, Storage devices, Book Scanner,
2. CD/DVD Writers and digital camera, Video digitizer, UPS backup etc)
3. Software (OCR, Linux/Solaris, MS Windows (Windows NT, Windows XP,
4. Windows 98 etc), ORACLE, Publishing Software, Search Engines etc.)
5. Digital Resources (CDs, E-journals, Scientific & Technical journals like, IEEE, ACM, ACS
6. Conversion of Materials to digital format with proper licensing agreements
7. High Speed Internet connectivity to broadband backbone
8. Miscellaneous expenditure
8. System Architecture
The system architecture is rationalized relative to the operational and technical architecture. It is
desirable, to concern; system properties such as scalability and extensibility can be taken into account
at the system architecture level. At this level whole digital library system is kept in mind. It can be
said that DL is a centralized subsystem that interacts with variety of data producers and customers
within a complex distributed system.
1. Architecture Of Alexandria Digital Library (ADL)

Alexandria Digital Library Project. The name Alexandria comes from the library of Alexandria,
Egypt, which was considered the center of all knowledge / learning. The project began in 1995 with
the development of the Alexandria Digital Library, a working digital library with collections of
geographically referenced materials and services for accessing those collections. The Alexandria
Digital Library Project is headquartered on the campus of the University of California at Santa
Barbara. The Davidson Library hosted the Alexandria Digital Library.
ADL follows three tiered structures
Client
Middle ware
Server
*KNF (Kevin's Normal Form)

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 Architecture of Alexandria Digital Library
2. An Agent Architecture for a Virtual Research Digital Library
Agents:
 Helps in bridging the gap between information producer, information consumer and publisher
 Interacting software agents cooperate to provide digital library services
 Different Types of Agents
 User interface agents (for consumer)
 User interface agents (for authors)
 Publisher agents
 Information retrieval agents
 Broker agents
 Directory agents
 Quantity agents
 Referee agents

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 
Architecture of Virtual Digital Library

3. Architecture of Green Stone Digital Library (GSDL)

The GSDL was developed by the University of Waikato in collaboration with UNESCO and the
Human Libraries Project to provide information to the developing world. Greenstone Digital library
retrieves requested information and generates HTML pages that contain the information. The
prototype system contains following parts
PDA (Portable Digital Assistant):
A thin client that runs HTML browser that displays the generated HTML pages, the browser is
capable of sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses. This is possible because we make
use of the wireless TCP technology that allows HTTP to run over mobile networks without the need
to translate to other protocols.
Customization Tool:
The tool can be used by users to customize Greenstone for small screen devices. It generates
configuration files that are used by Greenstone to generate HTML pages that match user preferences

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and that are suited to small screen devices. The customization tool provides a complete abstraction
from Greenstones low-level details such as macro or CGI arguments, and allows users to visualize
what the generated HTML page would look like, while they customize. The major component of the
system is the customization tool. The customization tool allows users to customize all four
components of Greenstones interface.
Home Page:
Allows users to specify the structure of the home page and gives them the option to place a search for
a single collection on the home page.
Document Structure:
The layout or structure of documents within each collection
5. Search Preferences:
Allows users to customize the search facility (e.g. they can choose to have a normal search or date
search)
Page Style:
Allows users to customize the look and feel of every page (e.g. what appears in the header and footer
of every page)
CONCLUSION
Digital libraries are very important sources of structured well-organized and well-stored information.
In fact, it is a collection of disparate systems and resources connected through a network, and
integrated within one interface and are responsible for developing and providing access to shared
collections. An ideal digital library has distributed structure as the distributed architecture promotes
modularity, flexibility, and incremental development, and accommodates diversity in current and
future library environments. At the same time, distribution presents difficult problems in
interoperability, coordination, search, and resource allocation. So digital libraries must follow
architecture guidelines and standards to ensure interoperability between system and consistent level
of system performance and coherent searching and access methods.

REFERENCES:
1. Alexandria Digital Library. from http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/ (Accessed on 15 Aug
2014)
2. Castelli Donatella,(2006) Digital Libraries of the Future and the role of libraries, library
Hi-Tech Vol. 24, No. 4, pp 496 – 503.

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 3. Gandhi R.T.D. Ramesh, Ragvendra, (2007) Role of Librarian in Digital Library 5th
International CALIBER, 2007 Punjab University Chandhigarh 8-10 Feb., 2007, pp 79-87.
4. Kesavan R. Venkata, Digital Library Services (2009) : A Practiced Approach for
Collection Development, Organization and Management, Journal of Library and
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5. Krishnnamurty M, Digital Library (2004): An Overview, SRELS Journal of Information
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6. Pandey, R.(2003) Digital Library Architecture in DRTC Workshop on Digital Libraries:
Theory and Practice, DRTC, Bangalore
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