Ronald F. Boisvert
National Institute of Standards and Technology
boisvert@nist.gov
Shirley V. Browne
University of Tennessee
browne@cs.utk.edu
Jack J. Dongarra
University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory
dongarra@cs.utk.edu
Eric Grosse
Lucent Technologies
ehg@bell-labs.com
Bruce Miller
National Institute of Standards and Technology
bruce.miller@nist.gov
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Software repositories have traditionally provided access to
software resources for particular
communities of users within specific domains. For example,
our Netlib 
[6] and
GAMS
[4] repositories
provide access to collections of mathematical software,
while our National HPCC Software
Exchange (NHSE)
[5]
provides access to high performance computing resources. The growth of the
World Wide Web has created new opportunities for expanding the
scope of discipline-oriented
repositories, for reaching a wider community of users,
and for expanding the types of services
offered.
Reaching a wider community of users has created a need
for increased automated assistance
in locating appropriate resources and in
understanding and making use of these resources.
The goal of our software repository research is to improve access to tools for doing computational science for both expert and non-expert users. We are exploring the use of emerging Web and network technologies for enhancing repository usability and interactivity. Technologies such as Java, Inferno/Limbo, and remote execution services can interactively assist users in searching for, selecting, and using scientific software and computational tools. This paper describes various related prototype experimental interfaces and services we have developed for traversing a software classification hierarchy, for selection of software and test problems, and for remote execution of library software. After developing and testing our research prototypes, we deploy them in working network services useful to the computational science community.
Although the focus of our work has been on software repositories, we believe that many of the results are applicable to other types of digital libraries, especially with respect to the provision of interactive and dynamically generated content.