1. Introduction and motivations
In the Digital Library (DL) world, the increasing need of managing huge amount of digital resources, produced
and consumed in different, and sometimes unpredictable contexts, requires information system that can adapt to
a changing environment. In this paper we present our experience in the development of Sapienza Digital Library
(SDL). SDL has started as research project undertaken by Sapienza University of Rome (Sapienza), and the Italian
super-computer center Cineca, in January 2011. The mission of the project was to provide Sapienza University with a
modern digital library collecting multidisciplinary material, coming from the Sapienza’s communities, that represent
almost all knowledge disciplines. The first requirement was to build a central point for digital libraries services, useful
to provide access to the material respondent to different communities’ needs, and useful to enable access through
different contexts. The digital library management system is the mean for making digital material available to other
systems, and providing services for specific contexts and objectives, in an interoperable manner.