A component assembly approach to digital library systems

With the advent of the Internet came the promise of global information access. In keeping with this promise, Digital Libraries (DLs) began to emerge across the world as a method of providing structured information to their users. These DLs are often created using proprietary monolithic software that is usually difficult to customise and extend. The Open Digital Library (ODL) project was created to demonstrate that DLs can be built as a network of components instead of as monolithic systems. Although the ODL approach has largely been embraced by the DL community, it is not without a few shortcomings. This paper introduces a graphical user interface and its associated framework for creating DLs from distributed components, consequently addressing a number of the limitations of ODL-like systems, as well as presenting a novel and generic approach for creating component-based systems. This system was subject to a user-based evaluation to confirm its utility and provide insights into possible extensions.