A hybrid system approach for supporting digital libraries

A digital library (DL) consists of a database which contains library information and a user interface which provides a visual window for users to search relevant information stored in the database. Thus, an abstract structure of a digital library can be defined as a combination of a special purpose database and a user-friendly interface. This paper addresses one of the fundamental aspects of such a combination. This is the formal data structure for linking an object oriented database with hypermedia to support digital libraries. It is important to establish a formal structure for a digital library in order to efficiently maintain different types of library information. This article discusses how to build an object oriented hybrid system to support digital libraries. In particular, we focus on the discussion of a general purpose data model for digital libraries and the design of the corresponding hypermedia interface. The significant features of this research are, first, a formalized data model to define a digital library system structure; second, a practical approach to manage the global schema of a library system; and finally, a design strategy to integrate hypermedia with databases to support a wide range of application areas. Received: 15 December 1997 / Revised: June 1999