Alexandria digital library: Rapid prototype and metadata schema

Abstract

The rapid prototype system for Alexandria Digital Library has proven of great value in clarifying the issues that we will have to resolve in the next stages of development of a digital library for geo-spatial information. In particular, we resolved several important issues concerning both the user interface and the catalog. In relation to the catalog, metadata standards arose as a key issue for the exchange of metadata between different digital libraries. Unfortunately, the number of metadata standards is growing and an international metadata standard for DLs appears unlikely to appear soon. In consequence, we need to be able to import and export different existing metadata standards.

A metadata scheme for a DL must handle all possible cases of DL objects. Owing to the limited focus of different metadata standards, it is likely that more than one will need to be implemented. The larger number of fields available does not mean that each metadata record will use all of them. Query response time is the crucial element for metadata scheme implementation. Metadata ingest in manual or automated form determines the quantity and quality of data stored in the metadata repository. The Alexandria Project will continue to evaluate and develop prototype metadata repositories. It is likely that a data model suitable for all DL requirements may be composed of multiple paradigms such as Relational-Object-Oriented or other combinations.

Work reported in this paper is supported by funding from NSF, ARPA, and NASA under NSF IRI94-11330 and by product contributions from the Digital Equipment Corporation and the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.