Using open source software for digital libraries

This study is an examination of features of the four most popular digital library open source software packages against a set of predetermined criteria that is deemed to be essential for the development of a digital library. While analysing and identifying the similarities, differences, strengths, and weakness of the open source software packages, it is indicated that open source digital library software still lacks certain functionalities that are perceived to be important. Each software package has its own individual strengths and weaknesses that will appeal to organizations and stakeholders with different needs. The study is expected to help those library professionals, seriously interested in implementing a digital library by providing a checklist to evaluate how well a particular software fits into their specific implementation requirements. Certain good features of the four open source software packages have also been pointed out via a comparison analysis.

In March 2010 the Digital Library of the Wielkopolska Region, the largest and one of the oldest Polish digital libraries reached the level of 100 000 objects available on-line. Since its inauguration in 2002, the dynamics of the development of Polish digital libraries has increased significantly. The common effort of several hundreds of scientific and cultural institutions in Poland led to the present situation in which there are over 50 publicly available digital libraries and together they give access to around 425 000 digital objects. Such a big number of similar network services lead to the need of integration mechanisms allowing to achieve a synergy effect perceptible for end users as well as for digital library creators and international digital library initiatives. Such mechanism developed by PSNC and named PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation, has been available as a network service since June 22-nd, 2007 and can be reached at http://fbc.pionier.net.pl/. This paper shortly presents the history of development of Polish digital libraries, showing the factors that have influenced the initial form and advancement of the Federation. It also describes the Federation architecture, organizational aspects of its operation, and key challenges including the integration of Polish and European digital libraries infrastructures.

PurposeFunding issues is observed to be the major stumbling block for the development of digital libraries in Nigeria. Hence, this paper aims to explore issues in obtaining and allocating funds for digital library development.Design/methodology/approachThe review is an explorative report of the state of affairs of digital library development in Nigeria with the associated fundraising issues.FindingsDigital library initiatives are coincidental development with transformational change in the technology-driven world of global information distribution. The desire of the information users to have better-unrestricted access to information becomes the hallmark of digital content development and web-based information services. The goal of making information accessible globally to large and diverse information users was achievable with the development of a digital library that provides enhanced information services, improves access and usability of digital information resources.Originality/valueThe library of the future has already materialized in form of digital library services, but the cost of developing a digital library is not foreseeable cheap, and if Nigerian libraries are to achieve digital library service goal, alternative sources of finance need to be sought after through fundraising scheme from friends of the library, rental services, consultation fees and collaboration effort on library consortia as well as advocacy for open access initiatives.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate open source software (OSS) for digital libraries and collection management and to propose different utilization scenarios based on the characteristics of the tools. Design/methodology/approach – The tools are assessed on the basis of their technical features and options, the type of the content they manage, the support for common library operations such as cataloging and circulation, the searching support and the interoperability options. Then they are evaluated by users and finally a number of usage scenarios are analyzed based on the results of the evaluation. Findings – The basic findings of the study is that open source digital library and collection management tools offer advanced operations and support various metadata and interoperability protocols with easy and user-friendly interfaces. Most of the tools are extensively used under various settings and establishments already. Language support for the interfaces should be extended with more languages and some tools with limited operations should be improved to be of practical use. Practical implications – The findings of the paper could be used support the selection of specific open source tools for various types of establishments. Originality/value – The study reviews the characteristics of a few OSS for digital libraries and collection management and reveals their specific strengths and weaknesses. It also presents a number of realistic scenarios and proposes the usage of specific tools based on time, technology and staff constraints.

General Background: Metadata interoperability is a critical foundation for the effective development and management of digital libraries, enabling extensive, open, and sustainable access to information. Specific Background: Existing research predominantly adopts a positivistic paradigm, emphasizing technical conformity to metadata syntax, format validity, and interoperability protocols such as OAI-PMH and Dublin Core. Knowledge Gap: This technical focus often neglects social, semantic, and institutional contexts, resulting in limited adaptability to diverse user needs and institutional environments. Aims: This study introduces the sociotechnical paradigm as an alternative framework for understanding and enhancing metadata interoperability. Results: Through a literature review and reference to digital library development models, the research demonstrates how the sociotechnical paradigm integrates technological systems with social dynamics, institutional policies, and localized meaning-making processes. Novelty: The study reframes metadata interoperability not merely as a technical process but as a collaborative, participatory, and semantic negotiation among stakeholders. Implications: By embedding sociotechnical principles, digital libraries can evolve as adaptive socio-information systems that reflect user contexts, embrace diversity of meaning, and strengthen inclusivity in knowledge access. Highlights: Bridges technical and social dimensions of metadata. Promotes participatory and contextual design. Enhances inclusivity in digital library systems. Keywords: Metadata Interoperability, Sociotechnical Paradigm, Digital Libraries, Semantic Context, Inclusive Access

This is a case study of the library of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences. The library has taken several initiatives for development of health science digital library. The building of a digital library of newspaper clippings using Greenstone Digital Library Software is one. The article discusses in brief some of the issues related to the development of digital library of press clippings. The article also highlights the services provided by the University Library, but only press clippings service has been explained in detail. An attempt has also been made to briefly explain the workflow of collection of print form as well as the digital form of press clippings.

There has been an increasing amount of research focus on the development of digital libraries, particularly on information seeking. A variety of information-seeking models used by library and information science (LIS) academics investigate the manner in which information is sought and transformed into knowledge, which should be taken into account during the design of digital libraries. However, in part this reflects the lack of knowledge about how these models explain user information seeking behaviors in a digital library environment. This chapter aims to address this lack of knowledge. It presents a set of information-seeking models that can be used by LIS scholars or experts to comprehend the dynamics of information seeking by users of digital libraries. The major role of this chapter is to provide a review of the existing “models” to date, and also to present a comparative analysis of the notable models that may contribute to ways of understanding the research on information seeking in digital libraries.

This research study examines how digital library technologies are transforming access to information in educational and public settings. With the increasing shift toward online learning and digital resources, digital libraries have become essential tools for students, researchers, and general users. The study aims to understand user awareness, usage patterns, benefits, and the challenges faced while interacting with digital library platforms. Primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire, while secondary data were gathered from academic articles, reports, and case studies on digital library development. The analysis shows that digital library technologies provide easy and quick access to a wide range of resources, including e-books, journals, research papers, and multimedia content. Users appreciate the convenience, search efficiency, and 24/7 availability offered by these platforms. However, the study also identifies key challenges such as slow internet connectivity, lack of digital skills, limited device access, and occasional technical issues within digital library systems. Overall, the findings reveal that digital libraries play a significant role in improving learning and research by making information more accessible and organized. The study concludes that continued technological improvements, user training, and better digital infrastructure can further enhance the effectiveness of digital library services. Furthermore, the study highlights the growing importance of digital library technologies in bridging the gap between traditional information systems and modern user needs. As educational institutions and libraries continue to adopt digital platforms, the role of user-friendly interfaces, reliable digital infrastructure, and well-organized content becomes increasingly crucial. The findings suggest that with proper technological support and digital literacy programs, digital libraries can significantly enhance knowledge accessibility for diverse user groups. This research encourages institutions to invest in continuous upgrades, user training, and innovative digital tools to ensure that digital libraries remain effective, inclusive, and future-ready.

Tools, techniques and protocols necessary for building up digital libraries have now fully evolved with computing power that allows parallel processing, multitasking, parallel consultation and parallel knowledge navigation and sohare tools that facilitate artificial intelligence and interadivity. Coincided with availability of sofhvare, hardware and networking technology, the advent of world wide web 0its, ever incr easing usage and highly evolved browsers have paved the way for creation of digital libraries. With rapid developments in technologies necessary for developing digital libraries, the world of digital information resources has expanded rapidly and exponentially. Increasing number of publishers are using the internet as a global way to offer their publications to the international community of scientists and technologists. With the technology available at an effordable cost, the libraries are initiating small digitisation projects as an individual library or as a group of libraries. Building-up digital collection and the infrastructure required to access them is a challenge that every library has to deal with. The article delves into technological evolution, cultural revolution and contents enrichment that led to revolution in growth and development of digital libraries. The artide has two distinct parts, while the first part deals with various aspects of building, accessing and organising digital resources and collection, the second part elaborates on the process, technology, formats, compression techniques and tools used in digital imaging. The article describes optical character recognition (OCR) and advocates for hybrid solution for preservation of digital information. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dbit.21.6.3547

Users’ evaluation of digital libraries (DLs): Their uses, their criteria, and their assessment

The development of digital libraries in Poland was initiated about ten years ago with the start of the dLibra project. This project was aiming for the creation of a software package to facilitate building flexible digital libraries for scientific and cultural institutions. The success of the package and the idea behind it caused rapid increase of the number of digital libraries, reaching 60 on-line instances and 600 000 digital objects in the first half of 2011. Wide use of open protocols and metadata standards was the base for connecting these libraries into a country-scale infrastructure based on distributed services. The need for an integration point of several services induced the establishment of the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation. This paper describes the current state of the digital libraries cyberinfrastructure in Poland, with a focus on two aspects of it - on services available for end-users, digital libraries creators and external systems, and on selective metadata streams flowing through the infrastructure. These selective streams allowed making a connection between Polish digital libraries and pan-European services like DART-Europe or Europeana. In case of Europeana it was the first metadata transfer with such scale of the distribution of source metadata providers.

PurposeA significant amount of digital repository research and development activity is taking place worldwide, which calls for the investigation of issues identified as critical to the development, management and sustainability of these repositories. The purpose of this paper is to establish a comprehensive set of critical success factors (CSFs) that would enable successful digital libraries implementation.Design/methodology/approachThe design of this study is exploratory in nature due to lack of previous research about CSFs in digital library projects. The paper builds the research framework to find CSFs for digital libraries initiatives by collecting possible factors from literature on CSFs of information systems; and feedback from ten experts who have had experience in digital library research and development as well as implementation, through e‐mail interviews. Six dimensions in the enterprise architecture framework (namely motivation, resource, people, process, location and time) needed to create the environment in which digital delivery can be effective and sustained, are mapped with the CSF established from the literature.FindingsThe results revealed six dimensions of CSFs and 36 potential success factor statements contributed by the study participants. Based on these findings, this paper postulates that successful deployment of a digital library implementation may depend on this set of success factors. The identification of these factors has important implications on digital library development.Originality/valueThere has been no comprehensive study on the success factors of digital libraries in the library and information science context, as such, no investigation of the factors in some real‐life contexts of digital library activities. It may help digital library start‐ups to understand what sources and services they need to develop to make their applications successful in an already very populated network. Both researchers and practitioners in the field of digital libraries may value the novelty and results of this study.

The purpose of this research; The aim is to get university students' views on a promising library and information education model. This study was designed in the phenomenology pattern, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The study group of the research consists of 80 students studying at various universities in Kazakhstan in the 2021-2022 academic year. Research data were collected with a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers. The data were evaluated by content analysis method. As a result of the study; It has been determined that the vast majority of university students sometimes use university libraries to access information. Majority of the students gain knowledge education; They categorized them as gaining the ability to access information, gaining the ability to use information, gaining critical thinking skills and gaining an understanding of accessing information in an ethical way. Students' views on creating a promising library are mostly in the direction of digital and traditional library options, print and digital rich resource content, resource alternatives with language options, ease of access for the disabled, audiobook options in digital libraries, and contemporary architectural design in traditional libraries. Students' views on the knowledge education model that should be created for a promising library are mostly; providing information literacy and library access skills courses in each department, providing online orientation support, organizing seminars on library practices in the university environment and the standards of accessing information through the library.
 Keywords; University libraries, promising library, knowledge education model, university students.

The main objectives of the study were to identify key features of the digital library management system (DLMS) for developing and managing digital libraries, to reveal the satisfaction level of the library professionals in using digital library management system, and the problems being encountered in using these systems. The current study was quantitative in nature as quantitative measures were applied through a survey research strategy. Keeping in view the nature of the study, a purposive sampling technique was used to collect data from the target librarians who had been involved in operating digital library systems for building digital libraries in their respective libraries. Descriptive and inferential statistical tests were used to analyze the data. Findings revealed that in most of the university libraries in Pakistan, free and open source software (FOSS) had been implemented. DSpace was the most widely used software by library professionals in Pakistan. Key features of the digital library software included a user-friendly interface, customization, reliability and security, use of metadata standards (Dublin Core), web-based, advanced searching, consultancy and technical support, sharing e-books to devices (mobile, tabs), full-text searching, use of Boolean operators, and access control. The study recommended that library professionals of universities should be careful in planning library digitization and they should consider the above features before implementing any digital library software in their libraries.

The paper describes an exploratory needs analysis for a digital library of Malay manuscripts. The manuscripts are facing several problems, including (a) the lack of trained manuscript librarians; (b) budgetary constraints in manual and digital preservation initiatives; (c) the problems in storage and maintenance of the collection; (d) restricted access for users, (e) the need to preserve the fragile manuscripts, (e) the difficulty of undertaking collaborative transliteration work because of the access problems; (f) the dispersal of titles at several repositories which exacerbates the access issue; and (g) a lack of detail in the description in the manuscript library catalogues. The objectives of this study are: (a) to find out the current state of manuscript collection management and practices in selected libraries; (b) to identify the problems faced by manuscript repositories; (c) to study the meta data schema used by repositories to describe their manuscript collections, and (d) to identify a suitable open source digital library software to support a digital library of manuscripts. The study gathers qualitative data from an open-ended questionnaire distributed to five manuscript librarians in Malaysia. Cataloguing practices in manuscript repositories were observed and the open-source digital library software Green stone was studied for its suitability. The information gathered and observed which helped determine the requirements of a digital library that empowers repositories in building, storing, preserving and disseminating information about manuscript collections is presented. The design and modules of the digital library are described.