UNC Digital Library Project

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Digital Library To-Do List

The functionality of the pilot Digital Library may be summarized as follows:

• Track and keep information about digital assets at UNC and elsewhere.
• Provide a broad range of tools to aid instructors, researchers and students in discovering digital assets.
• Allow users to organize, annotate, and share references to digital assets.
• Provide tools that allow users to build customized views of groups of digital assets and to share those views with colleagues and students.
• Strong authentication and authorization to provide protection for copyrighted and restricted materials.

The following matrix attempts to summarize some of the functions and elements that will be developed and notes some of the developers who will be working on the various pieces.  This matrix covers the functionality of the pilot (as noted above) as well as functions and elements which will be developed for later phases. Empty slots in the matrix are open for volunteers. To volunteer your services on the development team, please contact Bob Henshaw.

We have settled on Oracle as the back-end database for the system and we are looking at developing the middleware components using Open Source tools. We are looking in particular at Cocoon, a Web publishing framework being developed by the Apache group, which employs Java servlets and XML. We may also employ other Open Source tools and languages, such as PHP, for some of the digital library's functions. The database will store metadata as XML, using a schema developed by the project committee and the Triangle Digital Libraries Group. The schema is based on the Dublin Core element set. The following are links to schema documents:

A DTD for DL metadata
An XML schema for DL metadata
A diagram of the metadata schema

This matrix should be considered to be a draft. If you have any feedback, please contact Hugh Cayless.