The NCore Platform: An Open-Source Suite of Tools and Services for Implementing Digital Libraries

Abstract

NCore is an open-source suite of tools and services for creating production digital libraries and related repository systems. It provides a general platform for building digital libraries united by a common data model and interoperable applications. NCore currently powers the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) , which catalogs over 2.5 million resources from over 130 digital collection providers and thousands of web sites. Developed by the NSDL Core Integration team and its partners, the NCore platform consists of a central repository built on top of Fedora ; a data model and web services API that implements the model; a programmers toolkit in PHP, Java, and Javascript; a number of fundamental services, such as full-text search and OAI-PMH aggregation; and a variety of end-user tools for the collaborative creation of context and content. The repository and API code components of NCore are currently available on the NCore SourceForge site under the Educational Community License (ECL 1.0). Over the first half of 2008, the NSDL team will release the code for the full NCore suite of tools and services on the SourceForge project site.