An Integrated Digital Library Management System:Case Study Jahangirnagar University Library

Titli Roy,Md Humayun Kabir April 1, 2012

Abstract
Library plays a pivotal role in ensuring the success of higher degree of research in the university environment. Information technology has revolutionized the information handling activities in the academic libraries during the past few years. The Information Society demands that all the relevant technologies; that are involved in information processing, consolidation, repackaging and retrieval be merged so as to evolve an integrated system; capable of providing diversied services. In this direction the automation of individual university libraries is a rst step, rather a prerequisite for the development of such an integrated university library and information system. In this research study an attempt has been made to study the automation and networking of Jahangirnagar University and discuss the need for an integrated information system and the components of integrated digital Library.

Introduction

Library automation system has evolved from time to time as one of the information system that brought major change to human activities especially in library eld. The application of computing systems in libraries has been a subject of interest to professional librarians for more than 70 years. This evolution began dramatically in the last of 1960s with the development of library automation system. This system helped librarians to ease their daily activities in running the library by its automation functions. With the development of internet, the online database industry began in the early 1970s. Coupled with integrated library system solutions, this system provides end users a  one-stop desktop access point for materials held both locally and licensed internationally. The recent introduction of World Wide Web has allowed database producers a clear route for disseminating their resources to a wider audience, in many instances directly to the end user (in some cases bypassing the library) [3].

Web-based resources moved to the forefront in the mid 1990s, after libraries determined that users had begun to spend much of their time browsing the Web searching for relevant materials that could be conveniently delivered to their desktop digital fashion. Professional librarians began to think like users in terms of  one-stop shopping for information and having been successful at grafting their attention to the numerous resources available on the Web [4]. According to Kochtanek [3], the digital library movement, still in its early stages, has begun to evolve from its early research platform to more fully developed applications, typically in selected content areas. There are many denitions that researchers dened for it, but the best and the most related terms of it is the collections of digital contents with its storing, accessing, and retrieving methods [3]. Combined with classic research area dealing with electronic search which is known as information retrieval, digital library has evolved its retrieving methods from conventional search, commonly using SQL syntax, to a rich of information retrieval system. Nowadays, this evolution has new challenges to get more ecient and accurate in dealing with information that is distributed. From the evolution of library automation system that we mentioned above, we see an opportunity to build a system that has all those capabilities. We are putting it all together into one system, Digital Library System. This system will help librarians to manage library in  one-stop desktop application. The most important one is this system will solve problems in Jahangirnagar University library. The university has distributed collections, because it has 29 departments and each department has its own library.Few of them already have library automation systems that are mostly  stand-alone application, so it can't share the information their collections. With the capability of developed digital library application, the university can manage their scientic collections, e.g. papers, dissertations, thesis, etc., in digital format. This capability will save space and time to manage that kind of collections. This paper, which is based on Digital Library System, describes design and implementation system which has characteristics of integrated functions of library automation, distributed digital library collections, and context-sensitive information retrieval technique as its search engine.

Common Characteristics Of University Library in Bangladesh

At the level of university, it has only

In Universities of Bangladesh, the libraries are characterized by hierarchical of management and location context. one library to support academic activities.It also has library collections that consist of several disciplines. Everyone from campus is able to access to University's library. The existing such library can be found at other universities in Bangladesh, such as University of Dhaka, University of Chittagong, with some variations of management style. Beside that, the university has more than one library that spread out in

several faculties and several departments in order to support academic activities. Every member of the faculty's or department' libraries will be able to access their own library. or department. The management of library is controlled by each faculty Usually, the university's library conducts a routine meeting

between faculty's libraries to coordinate each other. In this sense, these libraries are decentralized libraries. In this paper, we use this decentralized libraries approach as the subject of research in developing digital library application. There are problems that arose in pursuing such eorts.Jahangirnagar University has 29 department and each of department has its own library, plus one university center library. Students usually have obstacles in nding books that their faculty doesn't have it, especially the books that are not related to the Faculty. The books, that they are looking for, may available at other faculty or department. The easiest way for nding that books is for the students have to visit each of libraries and search the books that they are looking for. So, if there is a system that can give distributed information of collections, the students will thrift their time in visiting each of the library. Other problem is to manage scientic collections. Nowadays, demand for accessing digital content dramatically increased. In Jahangirnagar University, all scientic collections have not yet been digitized. Users of library have diculties to get information about it, especially the contents of it. Moreover, users are not permitted to borrow such collections. They only permit to read it in the library. So, it would be helped to users if there is a system that can give an access to view scientic collections, where they can read it anytime and anywhere. And this system must also become a good assistant for users in nding a subject of information that they are looking for. The solution from above problems is to build a system that combine library automation, distributed information, digital library and information retrieval in one system.

Our System Architecture

Each faculty and department is geographically sparse and Having such

The Digital Library System was designed for library that covers the scope of university, based on university characteristics which is consists of some faculties and departments. separated at some distances and has its own library. Every library has a server and it is connected each other through the university network. conguration, those faculties and department can share information of through the network and this architecture is called a distributed system. In distributed system, the library can enrich their information collections for users by providing information collection to other library that is connected to it. So, the users will be easier and satisfy by the library service because they can get information they need only by accessing the library system that they are registered at there. For example, XYZ was registered as a member of department's library of computer science, he want to search an article about information economics. He knows

Figure 1: System Architecture of LONTAR

that this article could be available in library of Economic faculty. So, he can access information at faculty's library of economics from his faculty's library OPAC. He doesn't have to visit faculty of economic to search that collection. To increase the functionality of the system, it must be able to managed digital content. Librarians put their digital collections in the system. So, users of library can see it from library OPAC. Information retrieval also used to help users in nding their collections, because this concept will provide a context sensitive search. Figure 1 shows us the design of the system architecture that integrates all those components into one system. the system has 2 major modules that are library automation module and information retrieval module. Library automation module consists of all library functions such as acquisition, cataloging, circulation and reporting. It is used by librarian to managed information of collections. For the non-digital collections, the system will save information in Database Management System (DBMS). But for digital collections, system will not only save information about it, but also its le. FTP Server was used to store its le, so that users can download the le whenever they want to. Information retrieval module is considered as a front oce application, because it is used by users to nd information. OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). This module is used in library When librarians enter new informa-

tion of collection (in back oce application), the system automatically index some elds, i.e. title, authors, subject, publisher and abstract. We use English Grammar in order to stemming this information. This process will create in-

dexed les. When users search collections using OPAC, system will search the keywords using context sensitive information retrieval method. The challenge was in combining distributed information from other servers. In order to communicate between servers, the system was equipped by web service technology to passing information. By this technology, we consider to get low cost in storing data. A server didn't have to store information of collections from other server in it, but they can share information to each others. Every message, that is used to communicate between servers, is using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standard. When users want to search collection at other Each server This result contains title, libraries, the keyword is passes to other servers by web service. will process that keyword and return the result.

author, publisher, subject, call number, physical description, status and rank of collections, along with code of server location. Host server will combine that result and view the result to OPAC. In combining information that is distributed, system will sort the data by rank. If there is data which is similar, e.g. same books from 2 libraries, system will joined it and make new rank of the data, that is the average rank of it, and then re-sort the data to view in OPAC. We consider using this combined method to get a reasonable speed for users in nding collections, especially in distributed locations. Therefore, users will know location of collections that they are looking for from library OPAC.

Conclusion
This system was designed from the library

The integration of library automation, distributed digital library collections and information retrieval in one system could help librarians to manage library in  one stop desktop application. characteristics at Jahangirnagar University. With this system, Jahangirnagar university can integrate all libraries in university. They can share information of collection between department's libraries. This system could also helped librarians to manage the scientic collections into a digital content. For future work, there are some other things need to be done such as: 1. To enhance service for the users, this system could be added with facility to search collection from wireless devices, e.g. PDA, mobile phones, etc. 2. To enhance information retrieval method that can improve the search performance.

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