DAR: Digital Assets Repository

The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is a system developed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), the Library of Alexandria, to create and maintain the digital library collections. DAR of the BA acts as a repository for all types of digital material and provides public access to the digitized collections through web-based search and browsing facilities. DAR is also concerned with the digitization of material already available in the library or acquired from other research-related institutions. A digitization laboratory was built for this purpose at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The lab is equipped with state-of-the-art technologies for digitizing different types of material including slides in multi formats, negatives, books, manuscripts, pictures and maps, audio and video.

The goal of this project is to build a digital resources repository by supporting the creation, use, and preservation of varieties of digital resources as well as the development of management tools. These tools help the library to preserve, manage and share digital assets. The system is based on evolving standards for easy integration with web-based interoperable digital libraries.

One of the main issues in designing digital libraries is the association of the digital content with its metadata such that indexing, browsing, searching and retrieval can be done efficiently. The metadata attached to the objects is also used by the system to provide guided search to the user by displaying related objects, e.g. objects that have same creator or that fall under the same subject heading. This linkage between objects provides the user with a rich search experience and facilitates the exploration of the repository contents based on the user interests.

For further technical details, please consult our DAR technical report.