4 Key Issues in Digital Library lnteroperability Renato Iannella, Nigel Ward Research Data Network Cooperative Research Centre DSTC Pty Ltd, Level7, Gehrmann Laboratories The University of Queensland, QW 4072, AUSTRALIA Email: {renato,nigel}@dstc.edu.au Kaveri Chakrabarty National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT 2600, AUSTRALIA Email: k.chakrabarty@nla.gov.au Chris Curtis CSC Australia, Suite 5, Trevor Pearcey House Traeger Court, Fern Hill Park, Bruce, ACT 2617, AUSTRALIA Email: c.curtis@nla.gov.au Abstract To cope with the explosion of electronically available information, Digital Libraries must inter- act if they are to meet the information requirements of their clients. This paper gives an over- view of some of the key issues that digital projects will need to address so as to reach an acceptable level of interoperability. Keywords Digital Libraries, Interoperability, Metadata, Scalability, Z39.50, Resource Discovery, WWW. 1 INTRODUCTION Many authors have suggested that libraries can no longer just be physical spaces which allow browsing and borrowing of materials, they must also provide access to the exploding range of electronically available information. In response to this realisation, there are many Digital Li- brary (DL) projects, worldwide, that are attempting to establish digital collections, or at least digital access to the catalogues of collections. Interactions between these DLs is necessary to make the problem of finding relevant digital information tractable. This paper gives an overview of some of the key issues that digital projects will need to ad- dress so as to reach an acceptable level of interoperability. These issues include; User Interfaces, Standards for Sharing Information, Metadata, and Discovery of Digital Libraries. By addressing these issues, DLs will be able to searnlessly search other catalogues, retrieve documents, and use the services of other libraries. An example DL, the National Document & Information Serv- ice (NDIS) Project, a joint initiative of the National Libraries of Australia and New Zealand, the Open Information Locator (OIL) research project from the DSTC, and National Library of Aus- tralia research into user interfaces are discussed in the light of these issues. N. Terashima et al. (eds.), Advanced IT Tools © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1996