Document models for navigating digital libraries

Digital libraries allow novel methods of interaction between the users and the resources provided by a (digital) library. Traditional libraries only support a simple pattern of searching the catalogue, retrieving some books, browsing through them and reading the most relevant ones. We propose a new way of looking at the resources of a library: rather than keeping just the books, digital libraries offer a way of also keeping the history of interactions between the resources and their users. In this paper, we introduce the concept of portable, stand-alone and living meta-objects which assist users in traversing associations between artefacts. We refer to these objects as autonomous knowledge objects (AKOs). AKOs maintain the complex knowledge structures that already exist between artefacts; they also accept the users´ annotations and assist the users in navigation between the artefacts. AKOs are first-class objects themselves, i.e. they can be created, edited, communicated or even traded, like any other artefact in a digital library. In this way, the library enhances its knowledge value as it is being used