A Mediation Infrastructure for Digital Library Services

Abstract

Digital library mediators allow interoperation between diverse information services. In this paper we describe a flexible and dynamic mediator infrastructure that allows mediators to be composed from a set of modules (``blades''). Each module implements a particular mediation function, such as protocol translation, query translation, or result merging. All the information used by the mediator, including the mediator logic itself, is represented by an RDF graph. We illustrate our approach using a mediation scenario involving a Dienst and a Z39.50 server, and we discuss the potential advantages and weaknesses of our framework.