Within a digital library, collections may range from an ad hoc set of objects that serve a temporary purpose to established library collections intended to persist through time. The objects in these collections vary widely, from library and data center holdings to pointers to real‐world objects, such as geographic places, and the various metadata schemas that describe them. The key to integrated use of such a variety of collections in a digital library is collection metadata that represents the inherent and contextual characteristics of a collection. The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) Project has designed and implemented collection metadata for several purposes: in XML form, the collection metadata “registers” the collection with the user interface client; in HTML form, it is used for user documentation; eventually, it will be used to describe the collection to network search agents; and it is used for internal collection management, including mapping the object metadata attributes to the common search parameters of the system.

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The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) is one of the six digital library projects funded by NSF, DARPA, and NASA. ADL's collection and services focus on information containing georeferences: maps, images, data sets, text, and other information sources with links to geographic locations. During this study period, three different user interfaces were developed and tested by user groups. User feedback was collected through various formal and informal approaches and the results fed back into the design and implementation cycle. This article describes the evolution of the ADL system and the effect of user evaluation on that evolution. ADL is an ongoing project; user feedback and evaluation plans for the remainder of the project are described.

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The selection, acquisition, and management of digital data are now part and parcel of the work librarians handle on a day-today basis. While much thought goes into this work, little consideration may be given to the long-term preservation of the collected data. Digital data cannot be retained for the future in the same way paper-based materials have traditionally been handled. Specifi c issues arise when archiving digital data and especially geospatial data. This article will discuss some of those issues, including data versioning, fi le size, proprietary data formats, copyright, and the complexity of fi le formats. Collection development topics, including what to collect and why, will also be explored. The work underlying this article is being done as part of an award from the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).