Abstract

Digital libraries (DL) and in particular, open source DL software, are helping developing countries to manage knowledge and to disseminate information needed for national development. The flexibility, robustness, ease of use, and free availability of the open source Greenstone Digital Library software suite make it a particularly useful resource for a wide range of digital library applications. This paper describes the evolution of a Greenstone Support Network for South Asia to promote the development, adaptation and use of Greenstone in the implementation of digital libraries in this region.

Digital libraries in developing countries: The role of Greenstone

Digital Libraries (DLs) are important for library and information services in developing countries as they can help to preserve content and improve access to it, facilitate the creation of local content, and strengthen the information-handling capacity of libraries and a wide range of public, private sector and civil society institutions. An important enabling factor here is the building of collections of information resources in local languages and the availability of software interfaces in the user's language.

The open source Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) software suite, developed by the University of Waikato in New Zealand, is a user-friendly, multi-lingual, multi-platform package for assembling electronic documents into digital collections and for publishing these collections on the Web or on CD-ROM. It accepts documents in a wide range of proprietary and standard formats, supports numerous standards for document and metadata exchange, including compliance with the OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) and Z39.50 information retrieval standards, and readily converts bibliographic databases created under UNESCO's CDS/ISIS package into digital libraries, including the full texts of the referenced documents if available.

Greenstone's flexibility, robustness, ease of use, and free availability make it a particularly useful resource for the development of a wide range of DL applications and for the training of librarians and information specialists in DL concepts. Among the possible DL applications, many examples of which have been brought together on the New Zealand Digital Library site and in the examples inventory maintained by the Greenstone team are:

§  Library catalogues and full-text digital libraries based on them

§  Specialised document collections

§  Multimedia collections

§  Cultural heritage collections

§  Indigenous knowledge

§  Archives of different types

§  Institutional repositories

Greenstone has its roots in a computer science research programme at the University of Waikato to explore the potential of Internet-based digital libraries, and to develop systems that automatically impose structure on un-catalogued and distributed repositories of information. The objective of this was to enable information consumers to locate what they need and to peruse it at their convenience. Since 2000, the software has been improved and distributed as an international cooperative effort between UNESCO and the HumanInfo NGO in Antwerp, Belgium.

As part of this effort, UNESCO distributes a CD-ROM with Greenstone fully translated in all six UNESCO languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish), while the Greenstone user interface has been translated into more than 50 languages. Greenstone user groups have been encouraged on a linguistic basis, and now exist for Arabic, French, Portuguese and Spanish users. Regional support networks have been established in Latin America and in southern Africa with the support of international donors.

The Greenstone Support Network for South Asia

The South Asian sub-region comprises seven countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Greenstone support for specialists in South Asia began in 2006 through a voluntary initiative led by the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) with the support of several other centres of excellence. The main support tools have been a website and a regional e-discussion list subscribed to by 184 Greenstone users, both hosted by IIMK. In addition, the initiative has promoted about 30 Greenstone training workshops, two of which were sponsored by UNESCO.

Although open to all countries and specialists of the region, the support effort was reaching mainly those in India. To provide more balanced access and participation, international assistance was requested in 2008 to help launch a self-sustaining Greenstone Support Network in the region, where DL projects have been difficult to initiate, not only because of a lack of training and technical expertise, but also because of such factors as insufficient project management skills, inadequate funding and infrastructure, lack of knowledge in copyright issues and digital rights management, and poor documentation.

The approach proposed was to apply the proven concepts of best practice in development cooperation: participatory action, attention to user needs, cascade/leverage effect, training of trainers, scalability and sustainability, taking account of the important “soft” or non-technical constraints mentioned above as well as software support.

In December 2008, a contract was established by eIFL.net[ii] with the Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science (SRELS) in Bangalore to support the launching of the Greenstone Support Network for South Asia. SRELS decided to concentrate on support for the Kannada and Tamil languages as models for the other South Asian languages, and has completed the interfaces for both users and collection builders in these languages. A unique feature of the Tamil version is the online Tamil-English dictionary of important terms used in Greenstone to assist in building digital collections. A test collection of Tamil literary devices has been developed and is available on line through the New Zealand Digital Library, while a test collection and a dictionary in Kannada are under development. Basic or full user interfaces now exist for eleven South Asian languages - Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Singhalese, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. These interfaces along with technical support details are available on the network support site.

Nepal develops the first national Greenstone support network

HealthNet  in Nepal has been given modest financial support by the University of Waikato to help it to establish the national Greenstone support node and network. A digital library consortium of 12 institutions has been brought together to form the network, and will be registered as an NGO according to government rules. A network portal for the sharing of Nepalese library resources and presentation of customization issues, training courses and other aspects of open access to knowledge was launched at the end of 2009. The consortium has already made five Greenstone collections available online in English and has completed the Greenstone user interface in Nepali.

The broad objective of the consortium is to have Nepal adopt free and Open Source Software (FOSS) methods, forming a national ‘community’ which can contribute to development, diffusion and sustenance of FOSS techniques in information work. Library automation through the use of ILS software is a critical component of this process.

Nepal connected to the Internet in the second half of 1990s, and the web has since become a platform to add Nepalese content to the global information space. Ease of use and cost factors play a vital rote in deciding to adopt a software package. Greenstone, being an open source and web-based package, has the potential for to support a web-based digital library system.

In adopting a digital library system, sustainability has to be planned from the very beginning, and factors such as customisation, training and sharing of resources have to be taken into consideration. Therefore, consortium members are charged a small, annual subscription fee, in return for which the members get support service, customization of software, and web hosting of their databases.

Key components of the Greenstone customisation effort in Nepal have been the integration of Greenstone and Koha[iii] to enable easy access to available full-text documents corresponding to library catalogue entries, and the section tagging method to enable the user to go directly to the particular document chapter that he needs, which saves download bandwidth use in addition to providing a better service. Work is ongoing with the Greenstone team on improve these features of the software in the light of the Nepal experience.

The Greenstone user survey in South Asia

A user survey[iv] using web-based questionnaires was conducted in September-October 2009 among members of the Greenstone support programme in the South Asia discussion list and other professional lists, and known users. Separate questionnaires were provided for individuals and for institutions. Among the 64 respondents, 42 were individuals and 22 were institutions. In total there were 59 responses from India, three from Pakistan, and one each from Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The survey has provided a lot of information on digital library activity and infrastructure in the region as well as on users’ views on Greenstone and on Greenstone support efforts. Some of the interesting results are summarised here.

Respondents felt that support for digital library initiatives/ projects is needed primarily for preservation, software acquisition, maintenance and development, maintaining digital library portals, and for making indigenous knowledge systems online, with the last being especially highly rated by the institutional respondents.

The most frequently cited challenges in creation and use of digital libraries are human resources, expertise/ capacity building, budget and hardware/ technical support. The last, along with host facilities/ connectivity and support of management, which were cited by 5% of the individual respondents, are somewhat predictably relatively less important for institutions.

64% of the respondents are neophyte users of Greenstone. The second most frequent category (20%) is that of very experienced users (with more than 2 years experience), while the remainder have used Greenstone for between six months and two years. Eight respondents (25%) have used the multilingual facilities in South Asian languages.

77% of the respondents thought that a South Asian - based support organization for digital library initiatives/ projects is needed, while 3% thought not and 13% had no opinion.

Respondents were asked to select an appropriate model for a South Asian-based support organization for digital library initiatives/ projects.  This question was not included in the institutional questionnaire. Although there may be some ambiguity in the replies due to the fact that the choices were not strictly mutually exclusive, 60 % of the respondents were evenly split between country-based governance or sponsorship by a professional body or NGO while direct user representation or a governing committee were favoured by only 21%, with the remainder having no opinion.

Concerning how to ensure sustainability of the network, the model of cooperative participation in kind was clearly preferred (34%), while an equivalent number were split between the options of charging fees for specific services or for membership, and a smaller number (11%) favoured sponsorship by an existing professional organisation. The responding institutions, as opposed to the individuals, are apparently very leery about paying membership fees.

Training and consultancy are the services for which respondents are most ready to pay (respectively 27% and 20% indicated this), but consultancy is relatively less favoured by institutions. On the other hand, and logically, institutions seem more ready to pay for software development support than the individuals.

The results of the survey generally support the initial hypotheses concerning the need for a South Asian Greenstone Support Network and for the approach of building it through the strengthening of national level activities and the gradual extension of sharing and support activities by a growing pool of centres of excellence. The survey has also provided a useful benchmark for digital library development in the region, and a very useful resource for planning and targeting Greenstone support activities.

The way forward

The biggest challenge is to develop a spirit of networking and sharing at the national and South Asian levels, in cultures which traditionally have been used to defining responsibilities in hierarchical terms. A corollary challenge is the adoption of a system of network governance which delegates responsibilities for cooperative activities. Progress has been made through the strong involvement of several institutions, particularly in India and Nepal, but this progress has been uneven and needs to be consolidated through greater broader and deeper modes of cooperation.

The new Greenstone collections of the region will be inventoried and promoted on the project website, new members and partners solicited, and the further development of South Asian language interfaces encouraged. If at least two new nodes agree to join the regional support network, the network will be formally established with three initial nodes within the current phase of the project. A phase 2 proposal for international funding will be developed in mid-2010, aiming to consolidate and extend and ensure sustainability of the network in terms of membership, capacity building and operational information services for development. Readers who are interested in joining in the Greenstone support activity in the region are invited to contact the authors.

References

§   “A Pilot Project on Digital Library Support and Development in Africa”. John Rose. In: Proceedings of the IFLA 2007 Satellite Pre-Conference on “Managing technologies and library automated systems in developing countries: open source VS commercial options”, Dakar, 14-16 August 2007. Proceedings published in the IFLA Publication Series (no. 132), K.G. Saur Verlag, Munich, 2008, ISBN: 978-3-598-22038-8.