Chablis - Accounting and Payment Concepts for Digital Library Services

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Library Services

Anne Brüggemann-Klein1, Albert Endres2, Eike Jessen1, Ricarda Weber1, and Horst Werner3

1 1_{TU München, Arcisstr. 21, D-80290 München, {brueggem, jessen, weberr}@in.tum.de} 2 2

Uni Stuttgart, Breitwiesenstr. 20/22, 70565 Stuttgart, endres@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de

3 3

TU München, Arcisstr. 21, D-80290 München, bibdir@tumx2.biblio.tu-muenchen.de

1 Background and Aims

Previous activities in building digital libraries have reveiled a number of problems that need to be addressed. Most publishers are willing to contribute valuable material to a digital library only if it is to be charged for. Neither users nor librarians want to be burdened by complicated ordering and accounting procedures. These procedures have to be unobtrusive, but reliable, meaning that they need to be automated. For many library services very small payments have to be handled. These payments have to be economically and technically feasible. Also, most library services need to be extended to include casual short term and anonymous users.

2 Market Survey

To meet above requirements, electronic payment systems were considered as a key element. A market survey performed of payment systems [Web98b] revealed more than 60 different existing systems and proposals. They were classified into several categories and evaluated. Cat-egories used for example are economical properties like system status (operational, trial, de-velopment, theoretical proposal) and payment size (macropayments with more than 10 US$, small payments from about 10 cent to 10 US$, micropayments into the subcent region) as well as technological properties like payment mode (cash-like, cheque-like, remmitance-like, debit-advice-like) and validation mode (on-line, off-line and semi-online). A payment system clustering according to the economical properties status and payment size is shown in table 1. So far the eight systems emphasized in table 1 were installed in the Chablis digital payment system laboratory with at least their customer and merchant components. It was concluded that multiple systems will most likely coexist in the market, each with proprietary interfaces and a unique payment transaction workflow. Considering the breadth of library services and of user groups in question, it will be advantageous to plan for different payment systems.

3 Design Concepts and Architectural Model

The above conclusions led to appropriate design concepts. First of all, different library services should be mapped to a single accounting interface. On the other hand, different electronic pay-ment services are to be invoked from this common interface. Using these concepts, a model

1

Service discontinued by CyberCash Inc. in Q2 1999

2

Service discontinued by FirstVirtual Inc. in Q3 1998

3_P_{ilot discontinued by Compaq Inc. in Q4 1998} 4

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Table1. Clustering according to Status and Payment Size Status / Size Macropayments Small Payments Micropayments Operational Com.-POINT CyberCash GlobeSet S/PAY VeriFone Edd FirstVirtual1 RediCharge Secure Courier SET2Go WorldPay BankNet CheckFree RediCheck Cybank CyberCoin2 Ecash3 eCoin eVend E-Gold ClickShare µ-WorldPay Trial SET C-SET e-COMM FSTC E-Cheque Globe ID InterCoin MagicMoney NetBill NetCash CAFE Proton VisaCash Net900 IBM-MP MilliCent4 NetCheque No3rd Development Com.-STAGE X-Pay Geldkarte Mondex CyberCents PhoneTicks Proposal ACC iKP Mandate AIMP Sandia Lab NetFare PayMe Brands MPTP µ-iKP NetCard PayWord TUB LotteryTickets µ-AIMP SubScrip Agora DSR MicroMint Polling

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Ecash Cash Cyber- Milli-Cent IBM-MP Ecash Cash Cyber- Milli-Cent IBM-MP - - -6 ? ? -Invoice - Payment Request - Receipt Catalog Selection Fee-Based Digital Library Offer - Order - Delivery Payment Request - Payment Receipt Digital Library Order Server Server Payment with Browser Customer

Figure1. Chablis Architectural Model

architecture for digital libraries with accounting services was developed. This model is shown in figure1. It provides for an integrated approach to many types of transactions. Users select a digital library service. Each service request is answered by an offer, containing a price quotation and a selection of digital payment systems available. Each order is followed by a payment re-quest (invoice) addressing the actual payment system selected by the user. The rere-quested service can be performed before or after payment, however especially with anonymous users collection of fees after service execution is a problem. The system allows customer refunds resp. crediting for not or only partially executed orders. Users can combine orders by means of a shopping basket. The digital library uses a single payment server to settle all payments. This payment server can serve simultanously several digital library applications of an institution. Wrapper functions encapsulate the peculiarities of each payment system. Messages exchanged between the heterogenous library components, payment server components and payment system wrap-pers follow an XML protocol similar to IETF’s Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP)5. As up to now no special software is used to support users, communication between the payment server and the user needed to remain proprietary.

4 Results and Applications

The Chablis system includes a prototype implementation of a payment server for digital li-braries. It has been configured up to now for five payment systems, namely CyberCash/Edd, CyberCoin, Ecash, Millicent, and IBM-MP, and multiple library applications. Three library ap-plications have been implemented so far:

1. Ordering a short term licence for a book. This follows the MeDoc [EF98] concept of a digital library, transferring the right to browse an electronic document for a specified period of time.

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2. Purchase of single pages from a document from a publisher’s server, for which very small amounts of money are due, and

3. Requesting a single article to be scanned from a paper journal. This is a form of document delivery as supported within the Electra6framework. A scanned image of the article is trans-ferred electronically.

These fee-pased digital libraries are supported by generic services like order management, credit accountancy, shopping basket administration, access control and fee definition. Being part of the ongoing field tests of the above mentioned payment systems, all payments are executed either using genuine or toy electronic currency. All services are performed efficiently and reliably.

5 User Studies

The usability of the library services and the payment processes has been tested by several li-brary members and student users in workshop sessions. Particularly, the first and third applica-tion were well received. Only the second applicaapplica-tion will need further refinement regarding the clearness of fee markup and the unobtrusivness of the purchase transaction. The payment pro-cesses themselves only needed minor improvements. The system is currently undergoing more user evaluation.

6 Further Investigations and Outlook

Following our first project phase, where we mainly supported digital libraries in offering digi-tally paid-for services, in a second project phase we want to concentrate on the flexible and effi-cient use of fee-based digital library services. One very important and up to now not satisfactorly addressed problem is how to grant the proper execution of a paid-for service. Appropriate and comfortable transaction mechanisms for the various and heterogenous delivery models, usage modes and document types are required. Further pressing problems in this context are man-agement of heterogenous wallets, negotiation of transaction parameters, payment and refund processing, receipt administration and automated complaint handling. We need guidelines for payment system independent and application appropriate markup and visualization of fee-based offers to provide users with a familiar and intuitive environment. All these components we want to combine in a comprehensive, media-appropriate user support system that meets the special requirements of scientific digital libraries. The Chablis system will participate in broader field test environments as provided by the nation-wide library projects, e.g. Subito7[BG99], and as part of other V3D2projects. At least two additional payment systems will be incorporated that are currently expanding in the German market, namely SET8[SET97] and the smart card based German Geldkarte9.

7 Publications

[BKEJ+

98b], [BKEJ+

98a], [Web98a], [Web99], [Gen99], [Pah99], [Kim99], [Kut99]

6_h_{ttp://elektra.informatik.tu-muenchen.de} 7 http://www.subito-doc.de 8_h_{ttp://www.setco.org} 9 http://www.NetKauf.de/geldkarte

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References

BG99. T. Braun-Gorgon. Der SUBITO-Dokumentlieferdienst. Technical Report Technischer Bericht SUBITO.1-001-12.0, Bund-Länder-Initiative SUBITO, April 1999.

BKEJ+

98a. A. Brüggemann-Klein, A. Endres, E. Jessen, R. Weber, and H. Werner. Das DFG-Projekt Chablis - Abrechnungs-und Zahlungskonzepte für Dienstleistungen digitaler Bibliotheken. ABI Technik, 18:398–401, 1998.

BKEJ+

98b. A. Brüggemann-Klein, A. Endres, E. Jessen, R. Weber, and H. Werner. Projekt Chablis - Abrechnungs- und Zahlungskonzepte für Dienstleistungen digitaler Bibliotheken. Informatik - Forschung und Entwickung, 13:169– 172, 1998.

EF98. A. Endres and N. Fuhr. Students access books and journals in medoc. Communications of the ACM, 41(4):76–77, 1998.

Gen99. O. Gentz. Integration der digitalen Zahlungssysteme CyberCash und Ecash in den elektronischen Aufsatzdienst Elektra. Technischer Bericht Diplomarbeit, Technische Universität München, Fakultät für Informatik, München, March 1999.

Kim99. L. Kimmeringer. Vorbereitung des Aufsatzdienstes Elektra zur Integration digitaler Zahlungsverfahren durch Bereitstellung von Selbstregistrierungs- und Warenkorbfunktionalität. Technischer Bericht Systementwick-lungsprojekt, Technische Universität München, Fakultät für Informatik, München, March 1999.

Kut99. A. Kutscha. Konsolidierung und Verbesserung eines Angebots-, Verkaufs- und Nutzungssystems von Lizenzen für digitale Bücher unter Umstellung des Bezahlungsverfahrens auf CyberCash. Technischer Bericht Systemen-twicklungsprojekt, Technische Universität München, Fakultät für Informatik, München, March 1999.

Pah99. F. Pahl. Konzeption und Realisierung eines Kontroll- und Bezahlservers für ein bestehendes, auf Einzelzugriffs-basis abzurechnendes Web-Angebot unter Anbindung der digitalen Zahlungssysteme Ecash, MilliCent und IBM-MP. Technischer Bericht Diplomarbeit, Technische Universität München, Fakultät für Informatik, München, March 1999.

SET97. SET. SET Business Description, 1997. http://www.setco.org/set_specifications.html.

Web98a. R. Weber. Chablis - Market Analysis of Digital Payment Systems. Technischer Bericht TUM-I9819, Technische Universität München, Fakultät für Informatik, München, August 1998.

Web98b. R. Weber. Market analysis of digital payment systems. Technical Report Technischer Bericht TUM-I9819, TU München, August 1998. http://chablis.informatik.tu-muenchen.de.

Web99. R. Weber. Comparison of Internet Payment Systems. In F. Thiessen, editor, Bezahlsysteme im Internet - Micro Payments, Frankfurt am Main, August 1999. Technische Universität Chemnitz, Fritz Knapp Verlag.