Hybrid Online-Offline Digital Collections

摘要

Online digital repositories are rapidly becoming the norm to store various different forms of content, including academic documents and heritage collections. There are many advantages to online systems, including general accessibility and the increasing use of Web browsers as a platform. However, it can argued that, for the preservation of heritage, offline systems may offer other advantages, such as replication, simplicity and cost-effectiveness. This paper describes an attempt to exploit advantages of both approaches in the form of a combined online-offline digital repository, where some content is online on a Web server and other content is offline on a DVD-ROM. This new approach to designing systems for preservation and access is especially useful in areas with limited Internet bandwidth, such as in most African countries. Experimental results confirm that this system is effective and efficient.