Leveraging on associations -- a new challenge for digital libraries

Decades of research have been devoted to the goal of creating systems which integrate information into a global knowledge network. On the other side, Digital libraries have not overcome the traditional paradigm of delivering a document as ultimate objective. This paper argues that next-generation DL services must be built on accessing associations implicit or explicit in document collections and their metadata. It suggests a new approach to leverage associations based on (i) generic core ontologies of relationship and co-reference links (ii) semi-automatic maintenance of co-reference links by a new kind of service, and (iii) public engagement in the creation and development of the emerging association network.