Foundations of Digital Universities

Universities need to maintain data about various resources. They include intellectual creations that are the focus of (Digital) Libraries, but also courses, research projects and people. Data about the first are maintained in institutional repositories, while data about the others in various databases designed to support specific vertical applications. In this paper, we propose a uniform treatment of such resources leading to Digital Universities, i.e. a set of key resources, methodologies and tools appropriately organized to effectively support universities’ users. This requires new methodologies, data models, authority control mechanisms and system infrastructures able to support a broader range of services.