A generic alerting service for digital libraries

Users of modern digital libraries (DLs) can keep themselves up-to-date by searching and browsing their favorite collections, or more conveniently by resorting to an alerting service. The alerting service notifies its clients about new or changed documents. Proprietary and mediating alerting services fail to fluidly integrate information from differing collections. So far, no sophisticated service has been proposed that is integrated with the digital library software and covers heterogeneous and distributed collections. This paper analyses the conceptual requirements of this much-sought after service for digital libraries. We demonstrate that the differing concepts of digital libraries and its underlying technical design has extensive influence (a) the expectations, needs and interests of users regarding an alerting service, and (b) on the technical possibilities of the implementation of the service. Our findings will show that the range of issues surrounding alerting services fo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: JCDL
• Authors: George Buchanan, Annika Hinze
• Keywords: Alerting Service, Digital Libraries, JCDL 2005, Modern Digital Libraries