Supporting Course Sequencing in a Digital Library: Usage of Dynamic Metadata for Learning Objects

The production of interactive multimedia content is in most cases an expensive task in terms of time and cost. Hence, optimizing production by exploiting the reusability of interactive multimedia elements is mandatory. Reusability can be triggered by a combination of reusable multimedia components and the appropriate use of metadata to control the components as well as their combination. In the same way, digital libraries comprise vast digital repositories, a wide range of services, and user’s environments and interfaces, all intended to support learning and collaborative research activities. In this article, we discuss the reusability and adaptability aspects of interactive multimedia content in a digital library’s learning environment. We extend a component-based architecture to build interactive multimedia visualization within digital library’s learning environment with the use of metadata for reusability and customizability.