Building the WDL prototype was a team effort, requiring dedication and long hours. In addition to a working application, a complete mirror site was sent via the Internet for installation on a server at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.
“Our biggest challenge was to build a dynamic repository of multimedia which had to be searchable and displayable in seven languages and with all the bells and whistles of a polished, state-of-the-art Web site—in only a fraction of the time it should normally take,” the team agreed.
Babak Hamidzadeh, who led this part of the effort, noted that, “In addition to a very high-skilled team putting in long hours, we were able to meet the hard deadlines with a short development period by using experience and technologies that we developed on other Repository Development Center projects, such as the National Digital Newspaper Program and the eJournal/eDeposit Project. Those projects will, in turn, benefit from new technologies (for example, multilingual search and browse) developed for the WDL prototype.”