The Dspace and Greenstone Digital Library Software have helped spread the practical impact of digital library technology throughout the world, with particular emphasis on developing countries. As Dspace and Greenstone enters its second decade, this article takes a retrospective look at its development, the challenges that have been faced, and the lessons that have been learned in developing and deploying a comprehensive open-source system for the construction of digital libraries internationally. Open source digital library packages are gaining popularity nowadays. To build a digital library under economical conditions open source software is preferable. This paper tries to identify the extent of adoption of open source digital library software packages in various organizations through an online survey. In this paper an on line survey has been done to find out the usability of these open source digital library software.  It lays down the findings from the survey. In this paper also try to compare with the features of this popular OSS digital library software.

	 

	Key words: Open source software, digital library, greenstone digital library, Dspace.

An evaluative study on the open source digital library softwares for institutional repository: Special reference to Dspace and greenstone digital library

Introduction The development of Internet technology has provided academic and research institutions with a very high level of visibility on the web. As a result, teaching, learning and research is widely improved in the global society today. The intellectual call for knowledge and information dissemination by countless organizations and educational meetings has given birth to a terminology called open access. This initiative is aimed at bringing the knowledge society to a state of free access to all kinds of information and learning material using the Internet and ICT tools. The library plays an important role in sustaining the open access initiative (Das, 2008). Librarians who ensure the organization and dissemination of full-text content of knowledge materials to online communities are the digital librarians. This paper therefore examines the state of open access in MOUAU, discussing the challenges confronting the managers (digital librarians). Literature Review Digital Library and Open Access to Knowledge According to Shiri (2003), the Digital Library Federation defines digital library as: "Organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily available for use by a defined community or set of communities". Digital libraries are an emerging concept in Nigeria, even though today's libraries in the developed countries are routinely providing information and services in digital form. Borgman (1999) agrees with the view of Digital Library Federation (1998) which states that digital libraries have unique characteristics that differ from traditional libraries and their approaches to information provision. From a traditional librarian's point of view, digital libraries present a transformative model of a large-scale, user-centric organization that is moving towards an integrated form with various components. However, the main purpose of digital libraries remains consistent with that of traditional libraries in that the purpose of digital libraries is to organize, distribute, and preserve information resources just as it is for traditional libraries. Lynch (1994) says that, "digital Libraries provide users with coherent success to a very large, organized repository of information and knowledge." According to Trivedi (2010), the purpose of a digital library includes: * To expedite the systematic development of procedures to collect, store, and organize information in digital form. * To promote efficient delivery of information economically to all users. * To encourage co-operative efforts in research resource, computing, and communication networks. * To strengthen communication and collaboration between and among educational institutions. * To take leadership role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge Digital libraries promise new societal benefits. One is elimination of the time and space constraints of traditional "bricks-and-mortar libraries". Unlike libraries that occupy buildings accessible only to those who walk through their doors, digital libraries reside on inter-networked data storage and computing systems that can be accessed by people located anywhere in the world. When the full potential of a digital library is realized for a particular community, people shall be able to access all human knowledge hosted in that digital database from any location. Digital libraries that are accessible over the Internet provide opportunities to advance knowledge and to dramatically improve the quality of life. On the other hand, open access to knowledge is a key contributor in providing universal access to information and knowledge. The issue of open access is recently gathering global encouragement and support. …

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Digital Librarians and the Challenges of Open Access to Knowledge: The Michael Okpara University of Agriculture (MOUAU) Library Experience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a study of the institutional repositories (IRs) in use in Indian universities and research institutes.Design/methodology/approach – Repositories in various institutions in India were accessed and described in a standardised way.Findings – The 20 repositories studied covered collections of diverse types. Most of these collections have unique content.Originality/value – The goal of this study is to study the IR software and data based on the content type, metadata and characteristics. The paper also describes the collections and some important observations from this study.

Institutional repositories in Indian universities and research institutes: A study

The present study analyses the awareness and perception of users in the higher educational institutions in kanyakumari district towards open access resources. The major objectives of the study are to determine the awareness about open access resources, purpose and reason for using open access resources, level of satisfaction and perception towards open access resources. Data were collected from students, research scholars and faculty members of Arts & Science, Engineering, Education Colleges and University of kanyakumari district. The study reveals that the majority of the respondents were fully aware about open access resources and use for their academic activities. It is also found that the majority of the respondents were using open access resources for their course related work and satisfied its uses in their academic activity.

http://www.ijnglt.com/files/Issue%203/A%20Study%20on%20Awareness%20User%20Perception.pdf

A Study on Awareness and Perception towards Open Access Resources among the Users in the Higher Educational Institutions in Kanyakumari District

Introduction Universal access to information and knowledge is the UNESCO's overall mandate to promote the free flow of information and making information available at the fingertips of research communities. Open Access (OA) is an innovative form of scholarly communication within the digital environment aimed at achievement of universal access to information and knowledge. OA emerged as an alternative model of scholarly publishing. This is very much related to serials crisis, the term serials crisis is used to describe the rising costs of journal subscriptions during the last several years. As the budget of the libraries hardly ever rose, hence, a good number of libraries were obliged to cancel a significant amount of their subscriptions. OA to knowledge is a model adopted by many International and Inter-Governmental organizations, such as World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), for disseminating full-text contents to online communities. (1) OA during last decades, with growth of world population, literacy and movement, the demand for information and knowledge also increased exponentially. Similarly, there were simultaneous growth in the production and supply of information and knowledge. The quantitative increase in scientific information, had a number of implications, these included; rapid growth of research articles, rapid growth of specific journals, increase of prices of these journals, and tight library budget for purchase of these journals. The impact of increase in prices of journals has been felt in all countries across the world. (2) Academic community in general and librarians, particularly, are concerned about constant increase in the cost of journals year after year especially in Science, Technology and Medical (STM) titles. The monopoly of commercial publishers first led to the skyrocketing prices of print journal subscriptions, then the licensing system for accessing to electronic resources and collection of electronic publications in disguise of "big deal", makes it more and more challenging for libraries to purchase the reading materials are required by libraries to meet their users' need. At the same time it is also felt that most of the research are carried out with public money, so public should have free access to the products, publications of any institutions/organizations. (3) Aims of the Paper The aim of this paper is to examine how the concept of OA movement and OA initiatives happened, in line context of global access to information and knowledge in Bangladesh. Also to describe the current status and progress of OA journals and institutional repositories in Bangladesh. This will provide an understanding of OA movement in Bangladesh at the same time will encourage establishment of institutional repositories and making journals published from Bangladesh freely available in OA for global research community. Methodology In order to get better understanding and clear ideas on OA initiatives in Bangladesh a comprehensive literature search has been conducted by the authors of this paper. An exhaustive literature search has been conducted through Google and Google scholar platform. General phrase and Boolean search techniques have been applied. The following search terms were used: "Open Access AND Bangladesh", "Open Access initiatives AND Bangladesh", "OA AND Bangladesh", "OA journals", "Role of OA in library", "OA initiatives AND Bangladesh", "Institutional repositories AND Bangladesh" etc. In addition, a variety of grey literature was consulted including different project proposals, reports, book chapters and conference proceedings and others. Finally, personal contacts and discussions with scientists, researchers, and librarians have also been carried out in order to explore significant information for this study. Basic Concept of OA Definition of OA Peter Suber a dedicated promoter of the OA movement defines OA as "Open access to scientific articles means online access without charge to readers or libraries. …

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Andrew Buxton

Papers

Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives – the South Asian Scenario