Open Source Software solutions in Indian libraries
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-12-2013-0157 |
| Pages | 409-422 |
| Published date | 09 September 2014 |
| Date | 09 September 2014 |
| Author | Anilkumar Hanumappa,Mallikarjun Dora,Viral Navik |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology |
Open Source Software solutions
in Indian libraries
Anilkumar Hanumappa, Mallikarjun Dora and Viral Navik
Vikram Sarabhai Library, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the Open Source Software (OSS) market relevant to
Indian libraries and more specifically, to review the existing library automation, i.e. Integrated Library
Management System (ILMS) and Digital Library (DL) software solutions.
Design/methodology/approach – Survey method was adopted to collect data for this study and the
sample population for this study included 356 library professionals.
Findings – The study findings indicate presence of OSS like Koha and NewGenLib in the ILMS
category and Dspace, Eprints and Greenstone in the DL software category in India. The study also
indicates that there is considerable interest among Indian libraries to adopt or migrate to OSS.
Research limitations/implications – The sample included largely, more than 80 percent,
responses from the academic library segment and hence the results and analysis maybe more skewed
to the academic library segment. However the implications of this study could be extended to other
type of libraries and facilitate library professionals to make software choices with respect to library
automation.
Originality/value – In addition to exploring the opportunities of OSS implementation in Indian
libraries, the study includes issues related to migration, implementation, budget, training, etc.
The study would have value for library professionals and OSS vendors to understand the Indian
library market in the context of OSS.
Keywords Digital libraries, Open Source Software, Library automation, Information technologies
Paper type Research p aper
1. Introduction
Open Source Software (OSS) applications are gaining widespread supp ort and we find
many national governments adopting policies that encourage educational institutions
to adopt OSS (Davidson, 2008). The philosophy underlying OSS is to allow users, free
access to and use of software source code, which can then be adopted, modified and
redistributed in its original or modified for m for further use, modification and
redistribution (Erlich and Aviv, 2007). The successful examples of OSS solutions
include operating systems like LINUX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, web browsers
that include Firefox and Konqueror, graphical environments like KDE and Gnome,
productivity applications like OpenOffice and programming languages and
infrastructure solutions like Apache and MySQL (Kalliamv akou, 2007).
The market potential of OSS seems to be quite promising and could pose major
challenges to the dominant position of proprietary software (Nagy et al., 2010).
Increasingly OSS solutions are being adopted and it is interesting to note that OSS are
being deployed in areas where service levels were expected to be same or better than
closed-source alternatives (Driver, 2012).
Libraries also have been active in adopting OSS and in this context, Krist (2009)
describes the partnership between OSS and library to be natural, as both of them share
the same ethical and philosophical resolve. OSS for libraries can be broadly categorized
into two groups; one “that is a complete system that handles all the tasks related to a
service and the other as a tool that performs specific tasks and can be integrated into
other components to create new services” (Tennant, 2003). Plotting the history of OSS
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
Received 5 December 2013
Revised 11 January 2014
28 January 2014
Accepted 2 February 2014
Library Hi Tech
Vol.32 No. 3, 2014
pp. 409-422
rEmeraldGroup Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/LHT-12-2013-0157
409
OSS solutions in
Indian libraries
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