The Alexandria Digital Library project: Distributed library services for spatially referenced data

This paper provides an update on the Alexandria Digital Library project (ADL), centred at University of California-Santa Barbara with a satellite site at University of Colorado-Boulder. We discuss the components of the publicly accessible Web implementation. We describe the origins of ADL, its objectives of providing access to the services of a map and imagery library over the Internet, and of merging maps and images into the library information mainstream. We describe the development of the ADL prototypes, and focus on the features of the current implementation that distinguish ADL from other digital library efforts. The paper ends with an overview of outstanding research issues raised by ADL and other related projects, and of the impact such developments are likely to have on the accessibility of spatial data.