MyLibrary: A Digital Library Framework and Toolkit

This article describes a digital library framework and toolkit called MyLibrary. At its heart, MyLibrary is designed to create relationships between information resources and people. To this end, MyLibrary is made up of essentially four parts: (1) information resources, (2) patrons, (3) librarians, and (4) a set of locally defined, institution-specific facet/term combinations interconnecting the first three. On another level, MyLibrary is a set of object-oriented Perl modules intended to read and write to a specifically shaped relational database. Used in conjunction with other computer applications and tools, MyLibrary provides a way to create and support digital library collections and services. Librarians and developers can use MyLibrary to create any number of digital library applications: full-text indexes to journal literature, a traditional library catalog complete with circulation, a database-driven website, an institutional repository, an image database, etc. The article describes each of these points in greater detail.