Faceted infrastructure for semantic digital libraries

Purpose The paper aims to argue that digital library retrieval should be based on semantic representations and propose a semantic infrastructure for digital libraries. Design/methodology/approach The approach taken is formal model based on subject representation for digital libraries. Findings Search engines and search techniques have fallen short of user expectations as they do not give context based retrieval. Deploying semantic web technologies would lead to efficient and more precise representation of digital library content and hence better retrieval. Though digital libraries often have metadata of information resources which can be accessed through OAI‐PMH, much remains to be accomplished in making digital libraries semantic web compliant. This paper presents a semantic infrastructure for digital libraries, that will go a long way in providing them and web based information services with products highly customised to users needs. Research limitations/implications Here only a model for semantic infrastructure is proposed. This model is proposed after studying current user‐centric, top‐down models adopted in digital library service architectures. Originality/value This paper gives a generic model for building semantic infrastructure for digital libraries. Faceted ontologies for digital libraries is just one approach. But the same may be adopted by groups working with different approaches in building ontologies to realise efficient retrieval in digital libraries.