Overview

The University of Michigan Digital Library eXtension Service (DLXS) provides the foundation and the framework for educational and non-profit institutions to fully develop their digital library collections.

DLXS's impressive and comprehensive suite of tools -- including a powerful search engine and an array of class-based middleware -- has for years served as the cornerstone for digital library services and resources at the University of Michigan, including the Making of America collection, the Humanities Text Initiative, and the Library's Image Services program.

A number of early and successful University of Michigan digital library initiatives were built using "PAT" (later marketed as OT5(TM)), which is a powerful search engine developed at the University of Waterloo and later by the Open Text Corporation. In the late 1990's, Open Text licensed the source code for PAT to DLPS for further development and redistribution. These development efforts have recently produced ...

A NEW VERSION OF A PROVEN TOOL The newest DLXS enhancement - XPAT - is a powerful, SGML/XML-aware search engine, and an ultra-versatile tool for the development of digital libraries. XPAT provides excellent support for word and phrase searching, indexing of SGML elements and attributes, a baseline of support for XML (without Unicode), fast retrieval, and open systems integration. And ...

A Powerful and Versatile Library of Free, Open Source Digital Library "Access" Tools The Digital Library Production Service has developed a suite of tools for mounting collections of digital library content. Using object-oriented methods and widely available tools, this middleware has now been extended to support:

  • Encoded text collections ("Text Class")
  • Digital image collections ("Image Class")
  • Bibliographic data ("Bib Class")
  • EAD2002-encoded finding aids ("Findaid Class")
A growing number of collection management tools are also developed and distributed under the DLXS umbrella.

BENEFITS OF DLXS MEMBERSHIP: Support and Service of Digital Collections

Beyond the benefits of XPAT, a separate DLXS yearly membership provides institutions with updates to XPAT, email-based support, and training workshops at the University of Michigan. We also "prepare" and distribute many commercially marketed digital library collections (e.g., those marketed by Chadwyck-Healey) to member instititions.

 

For more information about DLXS, please send email to DLXS Info or contact John Weise at 734.764-8074.