Digital+Library+Software

= **Digital Library Software** = toc Digital library software offer integrated packages of components necessary for the creation of digital library collections. They are designed to aid in building, organizing, and sharing searchable digital library collections.

**Essential components of digitization software**

Compiling Content
This is the stage at which all the content intended for the digital library is gathered and information attached. Gathering content pieces into usable collections and organizing, describing and indexing through adding metadata are vital to digitization software. This is the portion of the program with which the librarian will be most actively involved.

Delivery
Delivery provides access to the collection online through a browser or on DVDs or CDs. Files and metadata must be converted into HTML in order to be readable through a browser. This could be done through hand-coding, but would be highly labor and time intensive. Veridian, Greenstone and ContentDM all automatically convert files and metadata into HTML for delivery.

Discovery
A digital library must be accessible to users through search and other methods such as browsing by date, title or subject. Ease of use and rapid search results are important to users and will affect the value of the library. The search engine should be robust enough that speed does not slow significantly as the collection grows.

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Software varies greatly in usability, steepness of learning curve, file types supported and features. Explore the differences, advantages and liabilities of each for the content and goals of your particular project before choosing which to use. More information on evaluation methods used in choosing between software is also list below in Evaluation of Software. Below are just a few of the most commonly used digital library software. Others not mentioned include, but are not limited to, ArchivalWare, DigiTool, Keystone DLS, and Vital.

Open Source Digital Library Software
Open source software is available under a variety of different licenses such as the GNU General Public License, Creative Commons, Education Community and other licenses. An extensive list can be found at [|The Open Source Initiative].

Although much open source software is free, that is not necessarily part of the definition. Open source more accurately refers to software in which the source code is openly available, so that people can alter and improve at will. Most open source software does not offer any type of formal support system, although many have active user communities that can help with many technical problems. However, they are not the same as having on-site technical support. In some case commercial technical support is available for these projects.

Greenstone
[|Greenstone] is readily available and distributed on SourceForge. Greenstone is a project of the

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New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato. It was developed in cooperation with UNESCCO and the Human Info NGO. It is used around in 82 countries around the world and available in multiple languages. Although there is no direct support for Greenstone, documentation, FAQs and how-to information is available on the web site. Unfortunately some of it is fairly technical and there can be a fairly steep learning curve. Plug-ins will be needed to support some formats. Download and setup on an individual computer is easy, but installation on a server will require some technical assistance. Once installed and used a few times, Greenstone is fairly easy to use. Greenstone can be used on Windows, and Unix/Linux, and Mac operating systems, although it may be more difficult to install on Macs. Greenstone supports both web libraries and searchable CD databases for use where internet service is not available or cost prohibitive.

DSpace
[|DSpace] is a joint venture of MIT and HP Labs. It is freely available as open source software. It is commonly used by academic, non-profit, and commercial organizations building open digital repositories. It is free and easy to install and customizable. DSpace preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, mpegs and data sets.

EPrints
[|EPrints] is open source software most commonly used as repository software. It can be used as is immediately on installation with a default set up sufficient for many purposes. It can also be extensively customized as needed. While there is not official free support, as with most open source software, community support or commercial paid support is available. It is compatible with UNIX, LINUX, Windows and Macs. The archive supports the OAI protocol so that it can work with other open archives.

Fedora
[|Fedora] is open source, originally developed at Cornell University. It can store, manage and access many kinds of digital content in the form of digital objects. Fedora is compatible with UNIX, LINUX, Windows and Mac OSs. While there is no official support, the highly active Fedora Commons community procides advice and support along with additional tools, applications, and utilities that augment the Fedora repository. Flexible and can be used to support any type of digital content, although an interface will be needed as Fedora itself has a limited user interface.

Proprietary Digital Library Software
Proprietary software is licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses. Despite the expense, proprietary software generally has the advantages of a good technical support system, and often is easier to use.

ContentDM
ContentDM supports a wide variety of formats. It is widely used with at least 2,000 libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organizations worldwide. ContentDM is easy to use in designing a digital library website, even by those without programming skills. Institutions with technical staff can customize sites in more advanced ways. Discovery is provided through WorldCat, leading to easy finding. Sharing features allow sharing of digital items via email or social media. EXIF and IPTC metadata embedded in digital images can be automatically extracted to Dublin Core fields. ContentDM can be quite expensive although price is tied to the size of the collection.

Veridian
[|Veridian] is designed specifically for digital newspaper collections. It can handle very large collections with multiple titles and millions of pages. Although Veridian was originally associated with Greenstone, it is much more complex and therefore was tuned into a commercial project since expert installation and maintenance of the software would be a necessity. Customers can purchase licenses that give access to Viridians’ code for extensive customization. With plug-ins, Veridian can allow users to easily share discoveries in a collection with social media.

Evaluation of Software
In the process of evaluating digital library software for use by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine the Digital Repository Working Group established this list of criteria as necessary to evaluate software for their uses. Another evaluation method is listed below this one. These could be used as guidelines for others in evaluating software, adjusted to an institutions needs.


 * **Functionality** – Degree of satisfaction by design analysis of the requirements enumerated in the NLM Functional Requirements Specification [1].
 * **Scalability** – Ability for the repository to scale to manage large collections of digital objects.
 * **Extensibility** – Ability to integrate external tools with the repository to extend the functionality of the repository, via provided software interfaces (APIs), or by modifying the code-base (open source software).
 * **Interoperability** – Ability for the repository to interoperate with other repositories (both within NLM and outside NLM) and with the NLM integrated library system.
 * **Ease of deployment** – Simplicity of installation and ease of integration with other needed software.
 * **System security** – Ability of the system to meet HHS/NIH/NLM security requirements.
 * **System performance** – Overall performance and response time (accomplished via load testing). System availability (24x7 both internally and externally).
 * **Physical environment** – Ability to deploy multiple instances for offsite and disaster recovery; ability to function with the NIH off-site backup facility; ability for components to reside at different physical locations; ability for development, testing and production environments.
 * **Platform support** – Operating system and database requirements. Staff expertise to deal with required infrastructure.
 * **Demonstrated successful deployments** – Relative number of satisfied users or organizations.
 * **System support** – Quality of documentation and responsiveness of support staff or developer/user community (open source) to assist with problems.
 * **Strength of development community** – Reliability and support track record of the company providing the software; or size, productivity, and cohesion of the open source developer community.
 * **Stability of development organization** – Viability of the company providing the software; or stability of the funding sources and organizations developing open source software.
 * **Strength of technology roadmap for the future** – Technology roadmap that defines a system evolution path incorporating innovations and "next practices" that are likely to deliver value.

Another project for evaluating digital library software which resulted in somewhat different results was performed by the Division of Information Studies, School of Communication & Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and published as A checklist for evaluating Open Source Digital Library Software. A useful table listing features of many of these that are used often as software for institutional repositories (very similar to digital library, but focused on collecting, sharing and preserving the intellectual output of the institution itself) is in the [|Repository Software Survey, November 2010] by the Repositories Support Project

Digital Image Collection Examples
Digital library software is used widely throughout the libraries, museums, archives and other institutions. A few examples of collections are below.
 * [|Collections made using contentDM]
 * [|Greenstone collections]
 * [|EPrints collections]
 * [|Veridian collections are near the bottom of the page]

**References**