http://www-serl.cs.colorado.edu/metis/index.html
One of a number of interesting services and tools funded by the NSDL, Metis is “a workflow system designed to support the workflow needs of digital libraries.” This Java-based application seems ot only work against its own internal store of users, but different events and roles can be configured to perform actions such as file compression, mvoing files, creating timers and new users and email notification. There is an API published, and you seem to get the source code in the download though no indication I could find of the license status. – SWL