Initially, we plan to construct a rapid prototype that will incorporate the major components of the proposed digital library. This prototype will be a centralized system, serving multiple users over a local area network, built in close collaboration with ESRI, an industrial collaborator in the Alexandria project. The principal goal of the initial prototype is to identify user requirements and to develop and test solutions to these requirements. Once the user requirements have been clearly understood, we plan to design a distributed testbed system for Alexandria. The goal of this design is threefold. First, it needs to provide transparent access to information distributed over wide area networks to a user community that is itself distributed geographically. Second, information retrieval needs to be efficient, especially given the non-standard nature of the data. Finally, to achieve widespread acceptance, the system must also be compatible with digital spatial data standards, spatial metadata standards and library standards (as discussed in the previous section).