The goal of this project is to design and implement a modern, scalable digital library repository (DLR). This repository will permanently store the digital objects that make up a library. The DLR will offer its clients a variety of services for managing intellectual property, for safeguarding information, for payment of royalties, for accounting, and for importing information from other sources. The DLR will employ a modular and distributed architecture, allowing autonomous organizations to collaborate in setting up a shared repository.
To achieve these goals, we are conducting research on several fundamental problems. These include the identification of digital objects in a distributed and changing environment; the replication of digital objects for archiving; the management of metadata; distributed indexing mechanisms; and robust and scalable awareness schemes. We plan to develop an architecture and interfaces for a DLR, and we will implement a prototype DLR for experimentation and evaluation of new ideas. The prototype will build on top of existing database and information retrieval technologies.
Acknowledgment: This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award 9811992.