| In recent years, digital libraries are emerging as the open knowledge systems for storing and exchanging information across networks. To some extent, however, currently most digital library systems are built to meet the requirements in certain domains and thus lack the capability to support more types of data resource and metadata. Furthermore, over-rigid architecture of such systems prevents them from communicating efficiently with peer systems, neither can they be easily extended to add new service types.This thesis proposes a rather different approach to explore how to build an extensible and flexible digital library system, which we name "DLMS" (Digital Library Management System), by leveraging on newly emerged techniques and concepts such as Digital Object Architecture, J2EE and Struts. More specifically, in our approach, user can (1) customize the data resource types and metadata definitions without modifying the system, (2) add or remove services in a system instance dynamically, and (3) interoperate with peer digital library systems easily via OAI protocol or programmable interfaces. Instead of re-inventing the wheels, we utilize Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) as our storage sub-system. DLMS is a highly universal, extensible system. It can interoperate smoothly with external peer systems. DLMS utilizes the following techniques to achieve this design goal: (1)Providing dynamic configuration service and digital object management service to guarantee the universality.(2)Utilizing Struts and the object-oriented features of Java language to guarantee the extensibility.(3)Providing OAI service interface and integrating with external services to enable DLMS to interoperate with other digital library systems.DLMS system has already been in use in some applications. Tests have been conducted on it and good test results have been produced.
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