An operating framework design for web-based collections of scientific digital objects

The primary objective of web-based collections of scientific arbitrary digital objects is to increase the distribution of the objects within the collection. Other priorities include providing a systematic organization of the objects, a means to catalogue and manage them, and user interfaces to discover, display, and retrieve items from the collection. These objectives require an advanced operating framework, consisting of multiple components that run under heterogeneous environments. The framework must operate using web protocols such as http, browser and server standards, database communication languages such as sql and middle layer communication methods such as Java or CGI. A generic operating framework is described here which provides many of the features needed to manage and operate a collection. Several of the features and associated methodologies are discussed including user services, system and application metadata schemes, database integration data-handling systems, and interoperability with distributed collections. Relevant policy issues pertaining to the collection management and intellectual property rights are also addressed