Service-Oriented Reference Architecture for Digital Library Systems

Developing and maintaining Digital Libraries requires substantial investments that are not simply a matter of technological decisions but also organizational issues. While digital libraries hold plenty of promise both now and for the future, they have been slow in taking off. Some digital libraries have either been completely abandoned or they have been put on hold indefinitely. One of the reasons for this predicament is that developers of digital libraries have approached their implementation the same traditional way of building applications, which is also akin to how structures of physical information organizations are built. Digital Libraries with their universal functionality may be even more flexible and reusable, if designed in a service-oriented manner. Such design should allow decreasing the effort of the creation of new digital libraries and the maintenance and scaling of currently existing large installations. Service-oriented architecture offers a better approach to building digital libraries, including streamlining business components, employing reusable services and connecting existing applications to communicate efficiently. The SOA is still a fairly new concept in DL systems. This chapter investigates the applicability of SOA as a fundamental architecture within the system. Its objective is to design a Service-Oriented Architecture for Digital Library System (DLS) using Web Service technology. SORADLS includes different layers which provide primitive services to the library applications built on top of the DLS. DLS techniques of personalization, alert, and caching build SORADLS as services. This architecture provides a fast, safe, convenient, and efficient service to users connected through the Internet.