International Journal of Digital Content Management

Allameh Tabataba’i University

Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

Research Paper
A Study of Open Source Softwares Used for
Creating a Digital Library
Soleman Pharcy

Date Received: 2020-11-05 Date Revised: 2020-11-24 Date Accepted: 2020-11-28

Abstract
the study of open source softwares
Purpose: The purpose of this study is
used for creating a digital library. Method: The present research has carried
out a conceptual analysis of open source softwares in digital library.
Findings:Explosion of information and the continuous necessity for its effective
dissemination to the appropriate users at the right time have created a dilemma for
the libraries. It’s become enormously complicated to competently handle and
manage the ever-growing volume of digital information and accommodate to the
knowledge needs of the users. To solve these problems, libraries are converting their
useful resources into digital form and trying to place it on the websites for
information sharing. Digital Libraries help the users to access an organized and
coherent repository of knowledge and information regardless of their physical
location and time and various remote location. Conclusion: The learners can be
networked through computers, laptop, mobile and other devices to make a virtual
library. Digital Library Software is an important requirement for the creation of a
digital library. Various open source digital library softwares are available today to
serve this purpose. An attempt has been made in this article to explain various kinds
of Open Source Digital Library Softwares.

Keywords: Virtual Libraries, Open Source Digital Library Software, GNU E-prints
Archiving Software, Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL)

‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
 Master of Library and Information Science Department, Pondicherry University, Email id-
[email protected]
164 International Journal of Digital Content Management / Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

Introduction
The explosion of information and the continuous necessity for its
effective dissemination to the appropriate users at the right time have
created a dilemma for the libraries. In the modern day of data
explosion, the urgent need for fast access of the right information to
the appropriate user at the right time has posed serious challenges to
the normal libraries within the effective management and handling of
knowledge and information. The recent developments within the field
of information technology have changed the user expectations to such
an extent that it's become imperative for the libraries to adopt the
fashionable techniques for the management, handling, and
dissemination of knowledge and information so as to cope up with the
changing scenario. As a result, the libraries have changed with time
from mere static storehouses of collection of paper-based documents
to dynamic service for a good spectrum of users. This has also
transformed the medium of data storage from paper to electronic and
optical media like Compact Disk- Read Only Memory (CD-ROM),
Digital Video Disk – Read Only Memory (DVD-ROM), and World
Wide Web (WWW).
The revolutionary developments, which have happened within the
field of computers, communications, and information technology,
have significantly changed the design and functioning of libraries
today. With the appearance of new technologies, it's has become
possible to construct, store, preserve, and reproduce information and
knowledge within the digital variety. The technique of digitization has
facilitated the design of digital libraries, which have gained enormous
recognition among the academic and technical communities all over
the place. The creation of a digital library involves the utilization of
some suitable digital library softwares. Various types of digital library
software are available today of which some are available free under
GNU General Public License, while some are incompletely free and
remain are priced.

Concept digital library

Digital Libraries are considered to sustain the creation,
maintenance, management, access to, and preservation of digital
content. Digital library, the standard of data storage has changed from
article to electronic figures. Appropriate to large advances in
information technology it's become possible to acquire libraries
A Study Of Open Source Softwares Used For Creating A Digital Library 165

without limitations of buildings and furniture where information and

knowledge are stored and handled in digitized shape. Such libraries
are commonly referred to as digital libraries where the library’s vast
storehouse of information is accessible and available at the user’s
work place fairly of user’s coming to the digital library.
Through a digital library environment, the knowledge resources are
in digital form, stored in multimedia repositories, and are made
available through Web-based services. The online has become the
mainly successful networked hypermedia-based system that permits
rapid access to a good arranges of networked information resources. It
allows linking among information resources stored on servers, which
are isolated geographically on remote locations and may be accessed
by any user at any time at anywhere. During this manner, a digital
library overcomes the barriers of your time and space. Such digital
libraries, which are networked through web-based technologies, also
are referred to as Virtual Libraries. Recognition to their tremendous
advantages, virtual libraries became enormously popular among the
academic and technical community all over the place. They have
growing at a high rate during the last decade and their effectiveness
has increased by leaps and bounds.

Components for creating digital library

For creating a digital library we need the following
1 Information Resources (content)
2 Metadata
3 Information Storage and Retrieval Systems
4 ICT Infrastructures
5 Manpower (D-librarian) and
6 Users (Kesavan, 2009).

Digital library software

The design of a digital library involves the purpose and use of suitable
digital library software. Digital library software is essential for
creating, organizing, managing and disseminating the digitally stored
information. They’re crucial for the creation, maintenance and
functioning of a digital library. Various type of digital library software
is developed during the last decade. Most of the digital library
software is the product of Digital Library Projects of various
Universities of different countries. A number of this software is out
166 International Journal of Digital Content Management / Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

there free while some are partially free and remaining is priced. Some
software is provided commercially from the manufacturers of digital
libraries and e-books on various topics (Shrivastava & Siddiqui,
2008). Hence, it's necessary for librarians and knowledge managers to
possess working information about the various kinds of digital library
softwares, which is out there today and understand the functionality of
digital library software.

Open source digital library software

Open Source Digital Library Software is a software used for the
system to release modifications for the community. It is a program,
during which the ASCII document is out there to the general public to
be used and/or modification from its original design free of charge,
i.e., opens. Open ASCII document is typically created as a
collaborative effort during which programmers improve upon the code
and share the changes within the community.
Open Source Digital Library Software is published under a permit
which allows the recipient certain rights to the ASCII document
including the right to provide and distribute derivative works. More
specifically this type of software meets the strategy published by the
Open Source Initiative. These are free programs, which are created
through the joint efforts of programmers since around the humanity.

Table1.List of digital library software

Row Software Developer
1 DSpace MIT Libraries and Hewlett‐Packard Lab
2 E-prints University of Southampton
University of Virginia and Cornell
3 Fedora
University
4 Archimede Laval University Library, Canada
Atrium Digital
5 Dura space
Exhibits
6 CONTENTdm Dries Buytaert
New Zealand
Digital Library
7 Greenstone Project at the
University of
Waikato
University of
8 MyCoRe
Essen
9 Open Library Internet Archive
A Study Of Open Source Softwares Used For Creating A Digital Library 167

Row Software Developer

Open Harvester Public Knowledge
10
Systems Project
11 DSpace-CRIS Cinecas
on an alpha
12 Curate
release.
Artefactual
13 Archivematica
Systems Inc.
Digital Curation
14 DMP Online
Centre

Study of some digital library software

The consequent digital library software is often employed for the
creation and functioning of a digital library:

Green Stone Digital Library Software (1998)

Greenstone is a set of software tools for building and
distributing digital library collections on the website or CD-ROM. It is
open-source software, multilingual software, issued under the terms of
the GNU General Public License (Greenstone Developers
Guide,2020). Greenstone established by the New Zealand Digital
Library Project at the University of Waikato, has been developed and
disseminated in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO
in Belgium (Greenstone overview, 2020). Greenstone software
empowers users, particularly in universities, libraries, and other public
service institutions, to create their own digital libraries (Bainbridge
and Witten, 2004; Witten et al. , 2000).

D-Space (2002)
D-Space is an open source software package typically used for
creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital
content (Radhakrishnan, 2014). Though D-Space shares some
important features overlap with content management systems
and document management systems, the D-space software serves a
specific need as a digital archives system, focused on the long-term
storage, access and preservation of digital content (Dspace overview
,2020).
The first public version of D-Space was released in 2002, as a
joint effort between developers from MIT and HP Labs Following the
first user group meeting in 2004, a group of interested institutions
168 International Journal of Digital Content Management / Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

formed the D-Space association, which determined the governance of

future software development by adopting the Apache
Foundation's community development model as well as establishing
the D-Space Committer Group.
D-Space is constructed with Java web applications, many
programs, and an associated metadata store. The web applications
afford interfaces for management, deposit, ingest, search, and access.
The advantage store is maintained on a file system or similar storage
system. The metadata, including access and configuration information,
is stored in a relational database and supports the use of Postgre
SQL and Oracle database. D-Space holdings are made available
primarily via a web interface. Additional recent versions of D-Space
also support faceted search and browse functionality using Apache
Solr.
D-Space accepts all types of digital materials including text,
images, video, and audio files. Possible content includes the
following: Articles and preprints, Technical reports, Working papers,
Conference papers, E-theses, Datasets: statistical, geospatial, Mat lab,
etc., Images: visual, scientific, etc., Audio files, Video files, Learning
objects, Reformatted digital library collections and lots of more.
DSpace is meant for ease-of-use, with a web-based interface which
will be customized for institutions and individual (Dspace overview,
2020).

GNU E-prints Archiving Software

The GNU E-Prints software is meant to permit people to line up all
purposes archives on the online, which are OAI compliant. It aimed
toward research papers but might be used for love or money. It uses
the available technologies like OAI, XML and Citation Linking to
form the system as useful as possible 9 (Barve, 2012).
E-Prints were created to facilitate authors self-archiving their work. E-
Prints also make the info about records within the archives available
for harvesting by the OAI-PMH interface. E-Prints are written in
PERL and runs as an apache module (using Mod Perl). This means
that the configuration doesn't need to be reloaded to serve each
request. There also are a variety of instruction tools to create and
maintain an archive. Quite one E-Prints Archive are often served from
one installation of GNU E-Prints but this increases the quantity of
RAM required (GNU EPrints, 2020; EPrints Services, 2006)
A Study Of Open Source Softwares Used For Creating A Digital Library 169

E-Prints use My-SQL to store the metadata about records and

users. The particular files within the archive are stored within the
UNIX file-system. A script allows the SQL database to be exported
during a more meaningful XML structure. The configuration files are
a mixture of XML and PERL. The core PERL modules of E-Prints are
written in such a way as to make it possible to write down new
command - line and CGI scripts without having to directly affect the
SQL back-end (Beazley, 2011).

Ganesha Digital Library Software (2000):

Ganesha Digital Library or GDL may be a tool for managing and
distributing digital collections using web-based technology. It was
developed by KMRG ITB, since 2000 and has been widely used for
Indonesia DLN network. The amount is predicted to be increased
since the releasing of GDL 4.0 version. This version supports the
Network of Networks (NeONs) topology model. The last version of
GDL is GDL4.2. The event was supported by funding from
INHERENT-DIKTI. And now, KMRG has got to keep it usable and
maintainable.
GDL is often used for University's digital library: to arrange ETD
(electronic theses and dissertations), scholars' papers, journal, article,
research reports, etc. GDL can manage any sort of digital resources,
such as text, image, audio, video, software. Unfortunately, it doesn't
touch the resources. It only receives and stores them during a filing
system, and makes a link from their associated metadata. GDL will
create metadata for every resource, and begin to figure on this
metadata - index, search, disseminate, display, and so on.
GDL4.2 is developed using the standard of application
development (analysis, design, implement, testing). The code adopts
the thing-oriented concept, so other developers can reuse the classes to
develop their application with their own environment. The opposite
thing in GDL4.2 is support to vary the theme easily. The features are
presumably the same. The most different is that GDL 4.2 attempt to
adopt Web2.0 standard, they're RSS and Folksonomy.

University of Michigan DLXS-XPAT

The XPAT engine is an SGML/XML-aware program that the
University of Michigan has deployed with a particularly diverse set of
digital library resources. XPAT is predicated on the program
170 International Journal of Digital Content Management / Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

previously marketed by Open Text as PAT and OT5(TM). The

University of Michigan has licensed the code so as to undertake
distribution and support, also on additional functionality.
XPAT provides excellent support for word and phrase searching,
indexing of SGML elements and attributes, a baseline of support for
valid and well-formed XML including Unicode UTF-8 support, fast
retrieval, and open systems integration. As a part of the UM DLXS,
the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service has
launched an endless development process during which we hope to
feature a variety of features to XPAT (DLX website, 2020).

Libraonix Digital Library System:

It was built with the understanding that while many users today have
access to the web, Everyone doesn't have an always-on broadband-
connection so this technique is meant to figure well when the user is
offline, at his desktop or on a laptop, but to require advantage of the
web once you are connected. The system is often installed from CD-
ROM, DVD-ROM, or over the web, and once installed can detect and
install new components and resources whether or not they arrive on
other discs or are found over the web.
The Libraonix DLS Supports Localized user Interfaces and
Electronic Books in many Languages: The web powers many other
features of the Libraonix DLS, including collaborative annotation,
with which you'll share your highlighting and notes on electronic texts
with others within the same church, class, or group, and automatic
headline downloading, which keeps you recent on new features and
resources for the system. This powerful system allows users to assist
us to provide support to smaller language groups -- groups which may
otherwise haven't any thanks to getting Bible software in their own
language.

CONTENTdm software
It is a versatile, multifunctional software package. CONTENTdm
provides tools for all aspects of digital collection management. It’s the
most powerful and versatile digital collection management package on
the market today, CONTENTdm handles it all documents, PDFs,
images, video, and audio files. CONTENTdm is employed by
libraries, universities, government agencies, museums, corporations,
A Study Of Open Source Softwares Used For Creating A Digital Library 171

historical societies, and a number of other organizations to support

many diverse digital collections.
CONTENTdm meets the requirements of a good range of users.
It’s currently employed by the schools, public libraries, museums,
commercial and government entities, and nonprofit organizations. The
gathering items include newspapers, maps, photographs, yearbooks,
transcribed diaries, rare books, oral histories, audio and video clips,
poster art, and more. CONTENTdm functionality allows creating
collections quickly and simply employing a simple point and click on
interface (Shrivastava and Siddiqui, 2008).

IVia software
IVia may be a complete Portal or Virtual Library Software package
written by IVia Research and Development Group of the library of the
University of California, Riverside. The INFOMINE Scholarly
Internet Resource Collection was the first user. IVia is an open-source
Internet subject portal or virtual library system. As a hybrid expert and
machine built collection creation and management system, it supports
a primary, expert-created, first-tier collection that's augmented by an
outsized, second-tier collection of serious Internet resources that are
automatically gathered and described. IVia has been developed by and
is that the platform for INFOMINE, a scholarly virtual library
collection of over 26,000 librarian-created and 80,000 plus machine-
created records describing and linking to academic Internet resources
(Dlib overview, 2020).
This software enables institutions to figure cooperatively or
individually to supply well-organized, virtual library collections of
metadata descriptions of the Internet and other resources, also as rich
full-text harvested from these resources. IVia is powerful, flexible and
customizable to the requirements of single or multiple institutions. It’s
designed to assist virtual libraries scale (Steve et al., 2003).

Dienst software
Dienst maybe a project of the CDLRG - Cornell Digital Library
Research Group. Work on Dienst sponsored by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on behalf of the
Digital Libraries Initiative under Grant No. N66001-98-1-8908. The
distributed Dienst software is configured to handle textual resources
(documents) during a sort of formats. However, Dienst architecture
172 International Journal of Digital Content Management / Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

includes a classy document model that accommodates a good sort of

digital resources. Using the Dienst software for these other resources
would require some programming.
The Dienst protocol and software is copyrighted but is out there for
free of charge and may be used and redistributed for non-commercial
uses. The ways in which Dienst is employed are Organizations that
wish to hitch an existing digital library built using Dienst,
Organizations that wish to make a replacement distributed digital
library with Dienst and Organizations that wish to undertake research
in digital libraries using an existing Dienst digital library or by
experimenting with the software. The modular nature of the software
encourages researchers who wish to explore mechanisms for
enhancing existing services or using the interfaces to existing services
to build other services (Disent overview, 2020).

Fedora software
Fedora is a Linux distribution developed by the community-
supported Fedora Project which is sponsored primarily by Red Hat, a
subsidiary of IBM, with additional support from other companies.
Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-
source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of free
technologies. Fedora is the upstream source of the commercial Red
Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, and subsequently CentOS as well
(Fedora overview, 2020).
The default desktop environment in Fedora is GNOME and the
default user interface is the GNOME Shell. Other desktop
environments, including KDE
Plasma, Xfce, LXDE, MATE, Deepin and Cinnamo, are available and
can be installed.

Conclusion
The digital technology has revolutionized the usual concepts of
conservation, management and access to information and knowledge
in library and archives community. Digital technology is a driving
might in many of the changes that are happening within the education
and research sectors. Many challenges, which are being face by the
libraries recently recognition to the changing scenario, are often
effectively met by utilizing the digital technology for enhanced access,
better storage and conservation facilities.
A Study Of Open Source Softwares Used For Creating A Digital Library 173

The development and achievement of a digital library can't be done

without a deep insight into the various types of digital library
softwares, which are available now. It’s imperative on the planners to
possess a reasonably good knowledge about the supply and
functioning of Open Source Digital Library Software, which is an
important requirement for the creation of a digital library. A correct
option to use a specific sort of Digital Library Software is often made
only there's awareness about their features and modalities. However,
it's suggested that Green Stone Digital Library Software is best fitted
to Indian conditions.
174 International Journal of Digital Content Management / Vol. 1 , No. 1 , Summer & Autumn 2020

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