Towards a theory of cost management for digital libraries and electronic commerce

Abstract

One of the features that distinguishes digital libraries from traditional databases is new cost models for client access to intellectual property. Clients will pay for accessing data items in digital libraries, and we believe that optimizing these costs will be as important as optimizing performance in traditional databases. In this article we discuss cost models and protocols for accessing digital libraries, with the objective of determining the minimum cost protocol for each model. We expect that in the future information appliances will come equipped with a cost optimizer, in the same way that computers today come with a built-in operating system. This article makes the initial steps towards a thery and practice of intellectual property cost management.