Patent ID: 8561076

Claim:
A method of coordinating media requests from a plurality of sources that share a shared storage media resource, comprising: providing a generic interface to be used by each of the plurality of sources to send media requests requiring action by the shared storage media resource, wherein the shared storage media resource being one of a number of types of media resource, the generic interface being independent of the type of the shared storage media resource; receiving, by a media and library manager, via the generic interface from each of one or more of the plurality of sources one or more media requests requiring action by the shared storage media resource, wherein one of the one or more media requests is associated with requiring physical manipulation of a unit of media; determining whether each of the one or more media requests is valid based at least in part on an availability associated with the respective requested action; using a processor to assign a normalized priority to each received media request that is determined to be valid based on a source-assigned priority and a source type associated with the source of the request, wherein the source-assigned priority is explicitly assigned by the source of the request based on a source-specific priority assignment scheme that is different from a source-specific priority scheme used by one or more other sources in the plurality of sources and wherein the processor is configured to use a configuration data associated with the source of the request to assign the normalized priority based on the source-assigned priority and the source type associated with the source of the request; placing, by the media and resource manager, each received media request that is determined to be valid in a queue of requests requiring action by the shared storage media resource; and servicing media requests in the queue based at least in part on their assigned normalized priority, wherein servicing media requests in the queue comprises sending a control message by the media and resource manager to the shared storage media resource via a specific interface associated with media resources of the same type as the shared storage media resource.