Consider now the process of harvesting (i.e., constructing) a DL. A user, say an
Information Specialist (IS), realizes a well-thought out need to build a
qualitative data repository on an important focused topic. He decides to invest
by harvesting and maintaining a long-term DL, described by a set of specific
categories. So he interacts with an IS interface to carefully define his DLharvesting request. The DL is then harvested and made available to its users. It
supports transparent user access methods using various data structures to enable
efficient keywords search, touring a DL via a topics tree, and DB/SQL oriented
views of the DL contents. The contents of the DL are continuously kept current
and the DL can be annotated and enhanced with additional relevant material.