DAR: Institutional Repository Integration in Action

The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is a system developed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to manage the full lifecycle of a digital asset: its creation and ingestion, its metadata management, storage and archival in addition to the necessary mechanisms for publishing and dissemination. In its third release, the system architecture has been revamped into a modular design including components that are best of the breed, in addition to defining a flexible content model for digital objects based on current standards and a focus on integrating DAR with different sources and applications. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the building blocks of DAR as an example of a modern repository, in addition to discussing the challenges that face an institution in consolidating its assets and DAR’s answer to these challenges.