Knowledge service and digital library: A roadmap for the future

Abstract

In the age of explosive growth of information, the objective of the digital library (DL) is to systematically and effectively organize, process and manage massive information resources, and to acquire meta-knowledge by integrating and displaying the knowledge accumulated in the process of reading, understanding, disseminating and utilizing information resources in order to provide readers with a systematic, complete, fast and accurate knowledge service. In this paper we analyze the problems in the existing DL information systems, and put forward a knowledge service model (KSM) to support the requirements of knowledge services. The proposed KSM consists of three layers: an information layer, a knowledge layer, and a knowledge service layer. We also describe service modes of KSM and finally discuss KSM applications in DL. The KSM is not a description of what we can accomplish tomorrow, rather it is a vision of what we should be aiming for. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.