An Innovative Architecture for a Distributed Cooperative Digital Library: The Design Perspective

1. An Innovative Architecture for a Distributed Cooperative Digital Library: The Design Perspective ICDL-2004, New Delhi, February 25, 2004 Rahul Banerjee Computer Science & Information Systems Group Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (India) E-mail: rahul@bits-pilani.ac.in Home: http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/~rahul

2. Interaction Points • Defining a Digital Library • Types of Digital Libraries: A possible Architectural Classification • Major international research projects: Some brief observations • The BITS-DiLib Initiative at BITS-Pilani • Evolving research directions • Conclusions (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

3. Defining Digital Library (1 of 6) • The term Digital Library has been defined and interpreted in a variety of ways including: • the definitions that border on a slightly enhanced version of searchable digitized information / metadata repository to • the one that include features like distributed knowledge management, digital rights management, architecture-neutral storage formatsand metadata architectures, customizable library services like bibliographicandcitation analysis services. (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

4. Defining Digital Library (2 of 6) • We define a Digital Library as a seamlessly integrated diverse information structure that is normally built atop wide area internetworks (comprising of heterogeneous systems and protocols) that provides authorization-based access, on demand, to the legitimate users in a transparent way to most or, preferably, all of the following services: • Domain-driven and Generalized Administrative Services • Domain-driven and Generalized End-User Services where these service-classes comprise of two large set of services as listed in the next four slides. (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

5. Defining Digital Library (3 of 6) • Administrative Services include: • Creation of organizational hierarchy for library administration • Defining privileges for the entities at each level of hierarchy • Defining library policies at one or more levels and defining precedence and conflict resolution rules and conventions • Content acquisition and classification • Content translation / transformation / extraction • Content organization, indexing and rating • Content updating and synchronization (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

6. Defining Digital Library (4 of 6) • Administrative Services (Contd.) • Load-balancing and back-up services • Security control • Rights management • Frequency analysis of content-accesses • Storage and Search management • Inter-site / inter-organization cooperation management • Membership, Subscription, Blockade and Billing services • Administrative Report generations (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

7. Defining Digital Library (5 of 6) End-User Services include: • Search (simple and advanced) services • Optional book-marking and per-user / per-usage-based tracking services • Customizable bibliographic services • Citation services • Customizable new-material alert services (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

8. Defining Digital Library (6 of 6) End-User Services (Contd.) • User-definable Report generation services • Profile-based services with a choice of pre-defined and user-definable profile templates • Asynchronous content access services • Optional Synchronous content services • Rights-query services • Membership and Subscription-specific services (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

9. Classes of Digital Libraries based on Architectures • There may exist several categories of Digital Libraries including the following: • Electronic Document Digital Library • Academic Document Digital Library • Asynchronous Media Distribution class of ADDL • Synchronous Media Distribution class of ADDL • Hybrid ADDL • Corporate Document Digital Library • Asynchronous Media Distribution class of CDDL • Synchronous Media Distribution class of CDDL • Hybrid CDDL • Virtual Digital Library • Database-oriented Netcentric Warehouse / Archive • Corporate / Closed DNW/A • Open / Public DNW/A The term ‘Document’ has been used here in the widest possible sense including all types of storable, retrievable and distributable objects. (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

10. Trends in Digital Library Research There have been two noticeable trends in the Digital Library research in general: • Technology-driven Digital Library initiatives (mostly driven by computer scientists); and • User-driven Digital Library initiatives (mostly driven by library scientists). [Chim et al, 1998, Han et al, 2003, Castelli & Pagano, 2003, Stevenson et al, 2003, Kurtz & Mostafa, 2003] (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

11. Strengths and Weakness of Research Approaches • Technology-driven class: • Strengths:Often leads to powerful,efficient and elegant solutions • Weaknesses: Frequently leads to incompatible approaches, often efficiency wins over ease of use, too many incompatible versions lead to scarcity of reusable application modules (thankfully, standardization is beginning to help!) • User-driven class: • Strengths: Clear down-to-Earth goals, focus on ease of use and ready usability • Weaknesses: Often low in efficiency, speed, flexibility and scalability (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

12. The BITS-DiLib Initiative • Basic Design Goals: Simplicity, efficiency and scalability • The basic architectural and structural design of the BITS-Pilani Digital Library System (“Project BITS-DiLib”) revolves around a simple, cooperative, demand-driven framework. • The BITS-DiLib architecture has borrowed a significant part of its design philosophy from the “Ichha-Drishti”: an IPv6-based Video-on-Demand Architecture developed in the year 2000 as part of the well-known next-generation internetworking research initiative “Project IPv6@BITS”. [Venkataraghavan, 2000, Banerjee, 2000, Banerjee, 2003] (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

13. Architecture of BITS-DiLib • Resource Manager • Content Manager • Application Enabler • A Multi-Agent System comprising of many Agents including a set of Service Agents and a Monitoring Agent • Security Manager (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

14. Another architectural view of BITS-DiLib Communication Channel (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

15. Design Issues • Choice of a Meta Data management strategy • Choice of a Location Transparency mechanism • Choice of Acquisition / Organization / Manipulation mechanisms • Choice of User-Level Service-set vis-a-vis the User Authorization and Access status • Choice of Authentication, Security and Protection policies and mechanisms • Choice of Resource Location and Management mechanism (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

16. The BITS-DiLib: Status Update • Search Engine phase – I operational • Load balancing module operational • Content Server phase – I operational • Control Server operational • MAS-based Bibliography generation and user-profile-based customization modules under development • Presentation manager module initiated (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

17. Thank you! (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)

18. Select References (c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India)