Submission and repository management of digital libraries, using WWW

Abstract

Article included in a special issue devoted to the theme: Pioneering tomorrow's Internet. Selected papers from the TERENA Networking Conference 2000, Lisbon, Portugal, 22-25 May 2000. Digital library objects can be quite complex, with a lot of metadata and data in different digital forms. Currently, most installations of digital library systems need personnel experienced with computers to administer and maintain them. Describes the design and implementation of tools to simplify addition, modification and numerous other maintenance actions in a digital library, for use by content contributors and librarians without special computer training. These tools provide an easy way to input or modify the metadata describing a submission and also to upload the digital documents, as well as inspect, commit or modify new submissions and old objects to a set of collections, even with different metadata fields. The tools are easy to install, while at the same time they are powerful and configurable. The tools are modular and generic, and cover even rare requirements. The configuration choices allow the customisation of the tools for use with different digital library systems using different metadata formats, fields, languages and many optional features, depending on the level of sophistication required for a particular environment.