an innovative architecture for a distributed cooperative digital library: the design perspective...

An Innovative Architecture for a Distributed Cooperative Digital Library:

The Design Perspective

Rahul BanerjeeRahul BanerjeeComputer Science & Information Systems GroupComputer Science & Information Systems Group

Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (India)Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (India)E-mail: [email protected]

Home: http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/~rahul

ICDL-2004, New Delhi, February 25, 2004

(c) Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani (India) 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 Initiative at BITS-Pilani Evolving research directions Conclusions


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 formats and metadata architectures, customizable library services like bibliographic and citation analysis services.



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.



Administrative Services include: 1. Creation of organizational hierarchy for library

administration

2. Defining privileges for the entities at each level of hierarchy

3. Defining library policies at one or more levels and defining precedence and conflict resolution rules and conventions

4. Content acquisition and classification

5. Content translation / transformation / extraction

6. Content organization, indexing and rating

7. Content updating and synchronization


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



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



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


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.


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]


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


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]


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

Resource Manger

Content Manager

Application Enabler

MAS-based Service Manager

Security Manager


Another architectural view of BITS-DiLib

Content Server-1

Content Server-N

Meta-Data / Content Manager

Client-1 Client-M

Communication Channel


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


The BITS-DiLib: Status BITS-DiLib: Status Update 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


Thank you!


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