Architectures for QoS based Retrieval in Digital Libraries

Introduction Digital Libraries will have a major influence on the design of future information systems. They will form the cradle from which future complex information technologies will emerge to provide "transparent" services to a variety of users. In Digital Libraries[1], many real-world agents will participate for various economic reasons. For example, publishers of books will place their collections in a digital format to reduce production costs and increase profit margins. Many other types of economic entities will flourish for reasons of lower costs and higher revenue. With the rapid advances in computer and networking technology, thousands of heterogeneous computers can be interconnected to provide a large collection of computing and communication resources. Such a collection will be used by Digital Libraries to house various information objects such as text, audio, video and image, and provide various information access services (quali