The Stanford Digital Library Metadata Architecture

Abstract

The overall goal of the Stanford Digital Library project is to provide an infrastructure that affords interoperability among heterogeneous, autonomous digital library services. These services include both search services and remotely usable information processing facilities. In this paper, we survey and categorize the metadata required for a diverse set of Stanford Digital Library services that we have built. We then propose an extensible metadata architecture that meets these requirements. Our metadata architecture fits into our established infrastructure and promotes interoperability among existing and de-facto metadata standards. Several pieces of this architecture are implemented; others are under construction. The architecture includes attribute model proxies, attribute model translation services, metadata information facilities for search services, and local metadata repositories. In presenting and discussing the pieces of the architecture, we show how they address our motivating requirements. Together, these components provide, exchange, and describe metadata for information objects and for information services. We also consider how our architecture relates to prior, relevant work on these two types of metadata. Keywords: metadata architecture, interoperability, attribute model, attribute model translation, metadata repository, InfoBus, proxy architecture, heterogeneity, digital libraries, metadata survey? This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement IRI9411306. Funding for this cooperative agreement is also provided by DARPA, NASA, and the industrial partners of the Stanford Digital Libraries Project. Any opinions, finding, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the other sponsors.