Enhancing Digital Libraries and Portals with Canonical Structures for Complex Objects

摘要

Individual digital library resources are of interest in their own right, but, in some domains, resources can be part of (perhaps multiple) complex objects. We focus on domains with complex objects where a digital library user can benefit from seeing and browsing a resource in the context of its structure(s). We introduce canonical structures that can represent local digital library structures; the canonical structures allow us to provide sophisticated browsing/navigation aids in a generic way. We evaluate a means to transfer the structure of our resources to a digital library portal. We implement and evaluate approaches based on OAI-PMH and OAI-ORE using Dublin Core - with and without a custom namespace. We also transfer the canonical structure to a portal where our navigation widget is implemented.