A digital library architecture for interactive television

An agent-aware digital library architecture (termed Discretion^TM) for mediation of interaction between people and media information servers is proposed. Discretion is a digital library. It is organized as a hierarchical collection of objects and makes use of object oriented techniques for the classification, localization, and indexing of its contents. Discretion provides interfaces for the maintainer of the digital library (the librarian) to manage library content, for end users to indicate their overall preferences, and to enter requests for library items (or queries). It employs agents, virtual attorneys working on behalf of the user, to interrogate the Librarian when new items are being brought into the library. In this paper, two ways in which agents can assist end users are presented. The goal is to address the issues about organizing, filtering and personalizing data available to end users so that the gap between what users want and what they end up getting can be bridged. The work suggests that interactive television can be a way to test the interface agent technology and to prove its use