PROJECT SUMMARY

DATE PREPARED:
1 March, 1998.

ORGANIZATION:
University of California at Santa Barbara.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS:
Terence R. Smith
Department of Computer Science
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara
CA 93106.
smithtr@cs.ucsb.edu
805-893-2966
805-893-8553 (FAX)

Michael F. Goodchild,
Department of Geography
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara
CA 93106.
good@geog.ucsb.edu
805-893-8049
805-893-8553 (FAX)

TITLE OF EFFORT:
ALEXANDRIA: A DIGITAL LIBRARY FOR GEOGRAPHICALLY-REFERENCED MATERIALS

ACCESS INFORMATION:
http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu

OBJECTIVE:
The goal of the Alexandria Project is to build a distributed digital library (DL) that allows users to access and manipulate information in a variety of classes of collection items in terms of geospatial reference. A central function of ADL is to provide users with access to the information in a large range of digital materials-ranging from maps and images to text to multimedia-in terms of geographical reference. An important type of query is ``What information is there in the library about some phenomenon at a particular set of places?''. From the Internet, both users and librarians can access various components of ADL, such as its catalog and collections, through powerful, graphical interfaces without having to know where these different components are located on the Internet.

APPROACH:
The main aspect of ADL's strategic approach involves:

1. a focus upon access to the information contained in many classes of collection items, including non-traditional items, by geographical reference;
2. the development of the user interface (UI) and catalog components of the DL architecture;
3. accessibility to the ADL catalog and collections via the Internet for a wide variety of users;
4. close interaction and interoperability with other DL activities by way of Internet-related technologies;
5. a process of incremental, evolutionary design and implementation of ADL that takes advantage of critical technological developments and especially Internet-related technologies;
6. digitally-supportable extensions to traditional library functionality.

In particular, the transitions from our initial stand-alone rapid prototype (RP) in early 1995, to our first World Wide Web prototype (WP) in late 1995, to our publicly-available testbed in early-1997, to our million-item operational library in mid-1998, are being made in incremental steps that build upon each other and upon a basic four-component architecture. This architecture involves: (1) user interface components that support graphic and text-based access to the other ADL components and services; (2) a distributed catalog component with metadata and search engines permitting users to identify holdings of interest; (3) a distributed storage component containing the digital holdings; and (4) an ingest component allowing librarians to store new holdings, extract metadata from the holdings, and add metadata to the catalog.

A variety of technologies being applied and developed in each of the four components. The graphical/geographical interface is supported by a variety of Internet-related technologies, such as browsers and programmable browsers. Access to the holdings is by way of a catalog component that supports spatially-based metadata models and content-based search techniques. Currently such techniques employ gazetteers for map documents and texture features for image documents. Browsing and the delivery of large items is supported by progressive delivery techniques based on wavelet technology. The high-performance servers that support the library operation are being based in part on approaches that involve parallel computing.

PROGRESS:
The main thrust of our implementation effort is to develop a quasi-operational testbed system. Our progress to date toward this goal can be summarized as:

• 1994 (6 months): stand-alone ``Rapid Prototype'';

• 1995: Web Prototype: initial deployment;

• 1996: Web Prototype: expansion and evaluation.

• 1997: Operational Library.

RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Our research and development accomplishments include

• the development and implementation of a new, three-tier architecture for ADL, including a Java client, HTTP middleware involving five standard interfaces to allow the easy construction of new clients, and two heterogeneous databases (catalog and gazetteer);

• redesign of the user interface based on input from a series of evaluation studies that includes context-sensitive help;

• incorporation of instrumentation technology into the testbed to support and facilitate evaluation;

• incorporation of significant collections into the testbed;

• interfacing ADL with various external applications, such as a Computational Modeling System, image processing systems, and a Collaborative Desktop Environment, using wrapper technology;

• agreements with the California Digital Library (CDL) to incorporate ADL in the first release of CDL before the end of 1998;

• numerous research contributions in the areas of access to information by georeference, distributed database support, image processing and access, high performance and parallel computing support, and user evaluation.

PLANS:
Some of the major plans for the next six months of the project include:

• conversion of the ADL middleware to Java,

• redesign of the ADL Catalog

• develop an ingest system for the new Gazatteer

• evaluate the new Java based client interface

• integration of research results into testbed;

• making ADL an operational component of CDL.

• final user evaluation and testing.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION, SHARING, AND PARTNERING:
We continue to work closely with a broad range of partners in testing and applying their technologies and in sharing our technologies and research results, including CDL, DEC, ESRI, Hughes, Informix, Microsoft, NIMA, Oracle, SDSC, US Geological Survey, US Navy (NRaD, San Diego), and US Navy (NAVO, Stennis), and Utah State University.