On the Effective Manipulation of Digital Objects: A Prototype-Based Instantiation Approach

This paper elaborates on the design and development of an effective digital object manipulation mechanism that facilitates the generation of configurable Digital Library application logic, as expressed by collection manager, cataloguing and browsing modules. Our work aims to resolve the issue that digital objects typing information can be currently utilized only by humans as a guide and not by programs as a digital object type conformance mechanism. Drawing on the notions of the Object Oriented Model, we propose a “type checking” mechanism that automates the conformance of digital objects to their type definitions, named digital object prototypes. We pinpoint the practical benefits gained by our approach in the development of the University of Athens Digital Library, in terms of code reuse and configuration capabilities.