Generalizing an Existing Digital Library
Kurt J. Maly, Mohammad Zubair, Stewart N. T. Shen, Michael L. Nelson · 1999
In an ideal world, all digital libraries (DLs) would be totally interoperable and access to them would be transparent to the user. In the real world, DLs have different functionalities, architectures, and implementations. Since most current digital libraries are single domain libraries supporting rather primitive digital objects, upgrading an existing library^Os capabilities is a significant problem. In this paper we describe our approach to converting NASA''s DLs to interoperable DLs using the NCSTRL+ digital library as the target architecture. Specifically, we describe the experience in converting an existing digital library, the Langley Technical Report Server (LTRS), to the new format, the tools developed to assist, and the problems we encountered. NCSTRL+ is an instance of the Smart Object, Dumb Archive (SODA) model for DLs. The SODA model transfers functionality traditionally associated with archives to the archived objects themselves. Objects in a SODA DL negotiate presentation of content and handle their own terms and conditions. We are exploiting this shift of responsibility to facilitate other DL goals, such as interoperability, object intelligence and mobility, and heterogeneity.