Providing interoperability services in the ubiquitous digital library project

Using the traditional library concept of special collections and the concept of virtual spaces, in this paper we propose that explicit creating collections using virtual spaces in the digital library -virtual collections-can benefit both the library's students and teacher's contributions and increase its viability. We first introduce the concept of a virtual collection, outline the costs and benefits for defining such collections, and describe an implementation of collectionlevel metadata to create virtual collections for learning proposes in a distributed digital library. We conclude by discussing the implications of virtual collections for enhancing interoperability and sharing across digital libraries, such as those that are being developed as part of the ubiquitous digital library.