Key Architectural Issues in
The Digital Library

William Y. Arms

Acknowledgments

  • This is work in progress.
  • This is a personal interpretation of ideas developed by the CSTR Project.
  • CSTR is a joint project of CNRI with Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley, funded by ARPA.
  • For background information, see the CSTR home page.
  • The architecture is more fully described in a paper by Robert Kahn and Robert Wilensky.

    • Key Issues and CSTR Terminology

    This set of WWW pages looks at the following six key issues in the architecture of the digital library.
  • Items in the library - digital object.
  • Identifiers - handle.
  • Storage - repository.
  • Sets of objects - composite and meta-object.
  • Information about objects - properties.
  • Semantic layering (schema) - data model.
    • The architecture under development is an open architecture. In general, it allows these topics to be considered separately.

    The CSTR Architecture and the World Wide Web

    Many of the concepts in the CSTR architecture can be partially implemented within the framework of the World Wide Web and fit with recent IETF discussions.

  • Digital objects, including meta-objects, can be stored in WWW archives.
  • The CNRI Handle Server supports WWW's URLs.
  • The IETF concept of a URC is a form of meta-object.
  • A Handle is a specific form of IETF's URN.
    • wya
    February 1, 1995