IJNGLT, May 2016, Volume 2 Issue 2
Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
Md Ajimuddin sk Librarian, S.S.Jalan Girls’ College, Kolkata73 West Bengal Email: [email protected] Samima Khatun Exstudent, Department of LIS, University of Kalyani, West Bengal Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT In the age of Information and communication technology (ICT) the demand of the library users have changed as well as increased. In this situation to fulfil the changed or increased demands of the users, the libraries are taking helps from ICT. In this regards the three concepts open access, open source and open standards are playing a crucial role. This paper describes the concepts of open access, open source and open standards and how it helps the libraries and what are the benefits for the using of these concepts in the libraries.
KEYWORDS: Digital Library, Metadata harvesting, open access, open source, open standard
INTRODUCTION
In the age of information society, the information became a vital resource for the overall development of the society. Every sphere of human life is dependent on the information such as economic, cultural, political, educational development, problem solving, any decision making etc. So the information is considered as powerful resources like other natural resources. Like other natural resources information also needed the equal dissemination for all. In this regard the library and information centre is devoted to disseminate the right information to the right users at the time. Library is a place for all where anyone can access at any time. With the development of Information and communication technology the access to libraries became very easy and now anyone can access to the libraries at any time and from anywhere. No need to go to the library physically, any one, any time and from anywhere can get their required information easily. In this context the three concept: open access, open source and open standard are playing vital role. Where the open access refers to the access to online research output including peer or nonpeer reviewed academic journal articles, conference or seminar paper, book chapters etc. which are free from all restriction to access. Open source software is the software that is freely available on the public domain with source code. Therefore there are no
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Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
any initial purchase fees or license fees and can be changed or customized to meet the local needs. The open standard is a standard which is publicly available and help the library in interoperability or allow to snatching the data or documents from one system to another or one library to another through information and communication technology (ICT). Nowadays all these three concepts became the part and parcel of the library and information centre to fulfil the objectives of the libraries by satisfying the users need.
OPEN ACCESS AND LIBRARIES
The concept Open Access (OA) was formulated by the three public declarations. i.) Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2002, ii.) Bethesda statement in June 2003, and iii.) Berlin declaration in October 2003. The term open access refers to the unrestricted or freely access to the scholarly publication. BOAI defined the term Open Access as "[the] free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself" (BOAI, 2002). Stevan Harnad, the Open Access guru described the term, "Information, which is Free, immediate, permanent, full text, online and accessible". So the Open Access is: ❖ Freely availabile scholarly publication (It includes including peerreviewed and non peerreviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, and monographs). ❖ Free from copyright and licensing restrictions ❖ Published documents are available on the public domain or online environment. ❖ Full text documents ❖ Anyone, anytime and anywhere basis availability. ❖ Materials can be text or audiovideo or any format and software also. Open Access generally two types: i. Gold Open Access and ii. Green Open Access. Gold Open Access or Open access journal: The author(s) or researchers can publish their article in scholarly journals and which will be freely accessible to all in the web. Publisher of the journals can charges as article processing fees. Green Open Access or Selfarchiving: The author(s) or researchers can submit a copy of their published article or work into a subjectbased or an institutional repository to archiving the document
for open access. This also called Selfarchiving. The most academic journal publishers also place a copy of articles of their author’s in archive for open access.
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Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
After the development, the concept is spreading tremendously throughout the world and like other developing countries India also joined this movement. The open access movement was started in response to the enormous costs of scholarly publication. To purchase the scholarly journal libraries need to pay large amount of money. This is not possible for the small libraries or the libraries of the developing countries. In this regards the concept of open access came into exist. With the development of information and communication technology (ICT) it is very easy to distribute or send the scholarly publication throughout the world. Small or big, economically poor or rich any libraries can access to scholarly publication through open access mechanism. Open access ensure the long term access to scholarly publication also.
OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND LIBRARIES
In the age of information and communication technology (ICT) the open source is a god gifted concept to the humankind, which changed our society tremendously. Since the development of the concept in by Richard Stallman the Open source is gaining popularity throughout the world. Generally the term open source indicates the software that is freely available in the web with source code. So anyone can download, use, modify and redistribute for their local needs.
In the term open source or ‘OS’ each word or the letter indicates different meaning. Open or ‘O’ means the open space where anyone can access or use it. Source or ‘S’ means the source code or human readable computer programme for software. Therefore the open source or ‘OS’ refers to the software for which the source code or the programme is freely available. So the
❖ OSS is free for use and run; ❖ OSS is free for modify to satisfy the local needs; ❖ OSS is free for redistribute to anyone; and ❖ OSS is free for distribute the modified version.
The development of OSS has dramatically changed the computing industry as well as our society. We always use some OSS in our desktop, laptop, mobile, tabs or iPhone in our daily work. So the modern society is very much dependent on the OSS. The OSS is also playing a vital role to bridging the digital divide in our society. Like other part of our society libraries also using some OSS to provide better services to the library users. Day by day more and more libraries are moving towards OSS for the following reasons:
❖ Because of the availability of the source code Libraries or the librarians can read and changed as their requirement.
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Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
❖ Because of the availability of the source code, if there is any problems or errors then the solution is possible with faster and great reliability. ❖ OSS save time, money and efforts, because there is no need to pay the licensing fees maintenance fees and upgradation fees. ❖ Generally OSS has its versions for all popular operating systems (Linux, Windows or Mac etc.) so the libraries can install and run the software easily. ❖ For technical support there are some online forums and groups which support 24 X 7 basis for any kind of problems.
Some of the popular OSS for Libraries
❖ Greenstone (Digital Library) ❖ Eprints (Digital Repository) ❖ Koha (Integrated Library Management System) ❖ NewGenLib (Integrated Library Management System) ❖ Joomla (Content Management) ❖ Drupal (Content Management) etc.
OPEN STANDARD AND LIBRARY
The term open standard refers to a standard that is freely available to the public and which is developed and maintain by a collaborative way. Open Standards helps in the interoperability or exchange of data from one system to another and facilitate a good information distribution environment throughout the world. So the Open standards ensure: ❖ The access to resources which are not dependent on a single application; ❖ The access to the resources which are not dependent on a particular hardware platform; ❖ Facilitate a longterm preservation and access to the scholarly resources; ❖ Facilitate a architectural framework for the future development of IT. The use of open standard in library and information science domain is not new. It was started when the American Library Association (ALA) was adopted two standards for card catalogue (5 x 12.25 cm and 7.5 x 12.25 cm) in its first conference in New York on 45 Sept., 1877. So the history of the use of open standard in libraries is so old. There are so many open standards which are using in the libraries predominantly. Some of these are:
MachineReadable Cataloguing (MARC): MARC is an implementation of the international standard "Information and documentation Format for information exchange". (ISO 27091996). So
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Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
the libraries and information centres widely used the MARC as a standard for the exchange of bibliographic data or information among the systems.
Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS): MODS is a standard for the bibliographic elements set developed by Network Development and MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress. MODS as a XML schema can carry particular MARC 21 data for the creation of original resource description records. So the MODS is more user centric than MARCXML schema and the element sets are:
❖ More richer than Dublin Core; ❖ More suitable for library data than ONline Information eXchange (ONIX); ❖ Simpler than full MARC format.
Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS): METS is a data encoding and transmission standard, which is expressed in XML and informed about the required metadata for the management of digital objects within the digital library or the repositories. It facilitates to interoperable exchange those digital objects among the library users and libraries or the repositories also.
XML Organic Bibliographic Information Schema (XOBIS): XOBIS is standard for Restructuring an uniform bibliographic and authority data by using XML. Generally XOBIS is related to information objects and their relationships to other information objects.
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAIPMH): OAIPMH is a standard protocol designed to harvest the metadata description of scholarly resources through web. There are so many digital library, institutional digital repository and digital achieve also using the OAIPMH for harvesting the metadata from the different database or repositories to provide the value added services to the users.
Z39.50: Z39.50 is a search and retrieval standard which allow a system to communicate with a remotely located client/server for the purpose of information retrieval. Simply the users can search or retrieve or access independently to information resources which are stored in a large database by using Z39.50 protocol.
CONCLUSION:
People say ICT is the blessings for the modern society which makes our life more easy and comfortable. ICT represents lots of opportunities for us. Now we can get information within a second and we can reach far distance within a second through ICT. So nowadays no need to go physically to complete a particular wok such as: marketing, booking ticket or participation in the seminar or
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Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
lectures. All are possible from home through ICT. Libraries are also available in our computer through ICT. No need to go physically in the library. We can borrow, read or use the library resources from our home. The open access, open source and open standard these three pillars of the libraries make available the libraries in our system. These three terms fulfill the main objectives of the libraries to serve the right information to the right users at the right time. So lastly we can say that the open access, open source and open standards help in the successful implementation of the Five laws of Library Science in the age of ICT.
REFERENCE:
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Open access, open source and open standard for Library and Information Centre: an overview
12. Singh, V. (2014). Open Source Software Use in Libraries: Implications for Social Justice?: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML), 4957. 13. Sompel, H.V., Nelson, M.L., Lagoze, L. & Warner, S.(2004). Resource Harvesting within the OAIPMH Framework: DLib Magazine, 10(2).
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