The DELOS Digital Library Reference Model. Foundations for Digital Libraries

The Digital Library universe is a complex framework. The growth and evolution of this framework in terms of approaches, solutions and systems has led to the need for common foundations capable of setting the basis for better understanding, communicating and stimulating further evolution in this area. The DELOS Digital Library Reference Model aims at contributing to the creation of such foundations. It exploits the collective understanding on Digital Libraries that has been acquired by European research groups active in the Digital Library field for many years, both within the DELOS Network of Excellence and beyond, as well as by other groups around the world. It identifies the set of concepts and relationships that characterise the essence of the Digital Library universe. This model should be considered as a roadmap allowing the various players involved in the Digital Library domain to follow the same route and share a common understanding in dealing with the entities of such a universe. This volume presents the DELOS Reference Model by introducing the principles governing it as well as the set of concepts and relationships that collectively capture the intrinsic nature of the various entities of the Digital Library universe. Because of the broad coverage of the Digital Library universe, its evolving nature, and the lack of any previous agreement on its foundations, the Reference Model is by necessity a dynamic framework, as is also this document. Continuous evolutions of the document are envisaged in order to obtain a number of well-formed and consolidated definitions, shared by the Digital Library community