Reading Notes: Setting the Foundations of DL's

Leonardo Candela et. al. (2007) Setting the Foundations of Digital Libraries. D-Lib Magazine 13(3-4), March/April 2007. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march07/castelli/03castelli.html

Presents the core elements of the Delos Manifesto and establishes a framework for the Digital Library structure.
Digital Library: “A possibly virtual organization that comprehensively collects, manages, and preserves for the long term rich digital content, and offers to its user communities specialized functionality on that content, of measurable quality and according to codified policies.”
Digital Library System: “A software system that is based on a defined architecture and provides all functionality required by a particular Digital Library. Users interact with a Digital Library through the corresponding Digital Library System.”
Digital Library Management System: “A generic software system that provides the appropriate software infrastructure both, to produce and administer a Digital Library System incorporating the suite of functionality considered foundational for Digital Libraries and, to integrate additional software offering more refined, specialized, or advanced functionality.”

The Main Concepts of the Digital Library:
Content encompasses the data and information that the Digital Library handles and makes available to its users.
Content: A collection of information objects. It is an umbrella concept applied to all forms of information objects that a DL collects, manages, and delivers.
User: covers the various actors who interact with DL’s. DL’s connect actors with information and sustain their ability to consume and make use of the DL to generate new information. User is another umbrella concept that includes all notions associated with the representation and management of the actor within a DL. It includes such basic concepts as the rights that actors have within the system and the profiles of the actors with elements that personalize the system's performance or correspond to these actors in collaborations.
Functionality: Concept that encapsulates the services a DL offers to its users. The bare minimum of functions would include such examples as new information object registration, search, and browse. The system should seek to direct the functions of the DL so that they reflect the particular requirements of the digital library's users and/or the specific requirements to the data it holds.
Quality: Concept represents the boundaries that characterize and evaluate the substance and performance of a DL. Quality can be associated with content, functionality, and also particular information objects or services. Some boundaries are objective while other subjective.
Policy: Concept represents the sets of conditions, rules, terms and regulations governing interaction between the DL and its users. Ie. Acceptable user behavior, digital rights management, privacy and confidentiality agreements, charges to users, and collection delivery.
Architecture: Concept refers to the DLS entity and represents a mapping of the functionality and content offered by a DL onto hardware and software components.
-DL’s are amongst the most complex and advanced forms of information systems so interoperability across DL’s is recognized as a considerable feat.
Actors: those interacting with Digital Library: 4 main ways that actors interact with digital library systems
1. DL End-Users: utilize the DL functionality for the purpose of providing, consuming, and managing the DL Content and some of its other elements. They identify the DL as serving their functional needs. The performance and production of the DL depend on the DL's condition at the time a particular part of its functionality is activated. The condition of the DL relates to the state of its resources. This state changes during the lifetime of the DL according to the functionality activated by users and their contributions. Sub categories: Information Creators, Information Consumers, and Librarians.
2. DL Designers: Utilize knowledge on the semantics of the application domain in order to define, customize, and maintain the DL so that it is properly associated with the information and functional needs of its potential DL End-Users. Providing functional and content configuration boundaries.
3. DL System Administrators: select the software components necessary to construct the DLS. Task: to identify the architectural configuration that best fits the DLS in order to ensure the highest level of quality. The values of the architectural configuration parameters can be changed over the DL’s lifetime.
4. DL Application Developers: develop the software components of DLMS’s and DLS’s, to ensure that the proper levels and functionality are available.