Agent Based Mediation Architecture for Federated Digital Library Services

Federated digital libraries are composed of autonomous, possibly heterogeneous information services distributed across the Internet. Interoperation between diverse information services is one of the main challenges faced by FDLs. In this paper we describe an agent based mediator architecture that bridges the gap between heterogeneity systems. All agents communicate with each other by exchanging RDF (resource description framework) messages. We illustrate our approach with a prototype system involving a SDLIP and a Z39.50 server, and we analyze performance of our infrastructure.