Libraries, not only research libraries but also public libraries, have been fundamentally affected by the immense spread of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Many public libraries have their Web pages, through which they are providing their new and conventional services. There are also web sites which provide library-like services. This paper shows an experimental project named Internet Public Library Asia, which provides information in multiple languages of information resources published in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. This paper firstly overviews how traditional public libraries have been affected by the Internet. Then, it describes a few aspects from the viewpoint of crucial library function on the Internet and also from the viewpoint of Asian resources and users. This paper secondly proposes a model to serve information about valuable resources published in multiple Asian languages, and then shows the metadata schema and a few software tools developed for IPL-Asia The name of IPL is borrowed from Internet Public Library based at University of Michigan, since it is, in part, a collaborative activity with the IPL in Michigan. The metadata schema is defined based both on Dublin Core and IEEE LOM and adapted for parallel description in the four languages, i. e. , Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English. The software tools provide functions to support collaboration among people engaged in development of metadata database and metadata editing. These tools have been developed based on the XML technologies.
본 연구에서는, 우선 인터넷의 보급에 의해 변화되어진 전통적인 공공 도서관 서비스를 몇가지의 예를 통하여 조사하였다. 이 과정에서 아시아지역에서 발신되어진 양질의 정보 자원을 아시아어로 소개하는 다언어 서브젝트 게이트웨이의 필요성에 대하여 깨달았다. 그리하여 본 연구에서는 한국어. 일본어, 중국어로 쓰여져 있는 정보 자원중 공공 도서관의 이용자들에서 유용하다고 생각되어지는 자료를 웹으로부터 수집하여, 각각의 정보 자원에 관한 소개를 전술한 3개 언어와 영어로 기술하는 Internet Public Library Asia의 구축을 진행해왔다. 본 시스템에서 사용하는 메타 데이터 스키마는DC(Dublin Core Metadata Element Set)