Creating digital library collections with Greenstone

The Greenstone digital library software is a comprehensive system for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a way of organizing information based on metadata and publishing ti on the Internet. This paper introduces Greenstone and explains how librarians use it to create and customize digital library collections. Through an end-user interface, they add documents and metadata to collections, create new collections whose structure mirrors existing ones, and build collections and put them in place for users to view. More advanced users can design and customize new collection structures

Developing information services for special library users by designing a low cost digital library : the experiment of NOC-Digital Library

This research originates from a belief that special libraries in developing countries need to modernise and implement their ICT infrastructure and articulate information policies that will facilitate the exploitation of information resources to the optimum to increase national productivity. Special libraries and information centres in developing countries in general and in the Arab world in particular should start building their local digital libraries, as the benefit of establishing such electronic services is considerably massive and well known for expansion of research activities and for delivering services that satisfy the needs of targeted users. The aim of this paper is to provide general guideline for design a low cost digital library providing services that are most frequently required by various categories of special library users in developing countries. This paper also aims at illustrating strategies and method approaches that can be adopted for building such projects. The paper intends to describe the phases and stages implemented for building a low cost digital library services for the NOC. It also aims at highlighting the barriers and obstacles facing Arabic content in the digitization stage

Collaboration in User Interface Design, or Bringing the Public Service Perspective to Building a Digital Library

21 p. Appears in Volume 2, Number 1 (2006) of Public Services Quarterly.This article discusses the potential for interaction and collaboration between Public Services and Technical Services librarians in the development of Digital Libraries. It discusses general principles for interface design, the need to take into consideration aspects of context and audience when developing interfaces, and the unique contribution that can be made by Public Services professionals in taking these factors into account. It concludes with a look at some Web 2.0 concepts and discusses future directions that include more end-user interaction in digital library interfaces

Integrating digital document acquisition into a university library : A case study of social and organizational challenges

In this article we report on the effort of the university library of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration to integrate a digital library component for research documents authored at the university into the existing library infrastructure. Setting up a digital library has become a relatively easy task using the current data base technology and the components and tools freely available. However, to integrate such a digital library into existing library systems and to adapt existing document acquisition work-flows in the organization are non-trivial tasks. We use a research frame work to identify the key players in this change process and to analyze their incentive structures. Then we describe the light-weight integration approach employed by our university and show how it provides incentives to the key players and at the same time requires only minimal adaptation of the organization in terms of changing existing work-flows. Our experience suggests that this light-weight integration offers a cost efficient and low risk intermediate step towards switching to exclusive digital document acquisition

Designing a Semantically Rich Visual Iinterface for Cultural Digital Libraries Using the UNESCO Multilingual Thesaurus

This paper reports on the design of a visual user interface for the UNESCO digital portal. The interface makes use of the UNESCO multilingual thesaurus to provide visualized views of terms and their relationships and the way in which spaces associated with the thesaurus, the query and the results can be integrated into a single user interface.\u

Designing a semantically rich visual interface for cultural digital libraries using the UNEsCO multilingual thesaurus

This paper reports on the design of a visual user interface for the UNESCO digital portal. The interface makes use of the UNESCO multilingual thesaurus to provide visualized views of terms and their relationships and the way in which spaces associated with the thesaurus, the query and the results can be integrated into a single user interface

Customizing digital library interfaces with Greenstone

Digital libraries are organized, focused collections of information. They are focused on a particular topic or theme—and good digital libraries will articulate the principles governing what is included. They are organized to make information accessible in particular, well-defined, ways—and good ones will include a description of how the information is organized (Lesk, 1997). The Greenstone digital library software is intended to help users construct simple collections of information very quickly. Indeed, only a few minutes of the user's time are needed to set up a collection based on a standard design and initiate the building process. Collections may be large—some comprise Gbytes of text; millions of documents. Furthermore, even larger volumes of information may be associated with a collection—typically audio, image, and video, with textual metadata. Once initiated, the mechanical process of building the collection may take from a few moments for a tiny collection to several hours for a multi-Gbyte one—perhaps even a day if it involves many different full-text indexes

Creating and customizing digital library collections with the Greenstone Librarian Interface

The Greenstone digital library software is a comprehensive system for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet. This paper describes how digital library collections can be created and customized with the new Greenstone Librarian Interface. Its basic features allow users to add documents and metadata to collections, create new collections whose structure mirrors existing ones, and build collections and put them in place so for users to view. More advanced users can design and customize new collection structures. At the most advanced level, the Librarian Interface gives expert users interactive access to the full power of Greenstone, which could formerly be tapped only by running Perl scripts manually

Access and usability issues of scholarly electronic publications

This chapter looks at the various access and usability issues related to scholarly information resources. It first looks at the various channels through which a user can get access to scholarly electronic publications. It then discusses the issues and studies surrounding usability. Some important parameters for measuring the usability of information access systems have been identified. Finally the chapter looks at the major problems facing the users in getting access to scholarly information through today's hybrid libraries, and mentions some possible measures to resolve these problems