Interactive Editing and Cataloging Interfaces for Modern Digital Library Systems

The next-generation High Energy Physics information system, INSPIRE, is being built by combining the content from the successful SPIRES database of bibliographic information with the CDS Invenio software being developed at CERN, an open-source platform for large digital library systems. The project is a collaboration between four major particle physics laboratories in Europe and the U.S. New tools are being developed to enable the global cooperation between catalogers at these labs. The BibEdit module will provide a central interface for the editing, enrichment, correction and verification of a record on its way into the system, by processing and presenting data from several supporting modules to the cataloger. The objective is to minimize the time and actions needed by the cataloger to process the record. To create a fast and powerful web application we make use of modern AJAX technology to create a dynamic and responsive user interface, where server communication happens in the background without delaying the work of the user. On the Apache web server a Python engine processes the different types of requests and submits persistent changes to a MySQL database, while caching temporary data on file. Data is transferred between the client and server using the JSON protocol. By using JavaScript, jQuery and jQuery plug-ins we enable such clientside UI features as in-place editing, hotkeys, autosuggest etc.