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Using open
Using open source software for source software
digital libraries
A case study of CUSAT
217
Surendran Cherukodan
School of Engineering, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Received 12 August 2010
Cochin, India Revised 14 January 2011
18 July 2011
G. Santhosh Kumar Accepted 31 July 2011
Department of Computer Science, Cochin University of Science and Technology,
Cochin, India
S. Humayoon Kabir
Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kerala,
Thiruvananthapuram, India

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of a digital library at
Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), India, using DSpace open source software.
The study covers the structure, contents and usage of CUSAT digital library.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines the possibilities of applying open source in
libraries. An evaluative approach is carried out to explore the features of the CUSAT digital library.
The Google Analytics service is employed to measure the amount of use of digital library by users
across the world.
Findings – CUSAT has successfully applied DSpace open source software for building a digital
library. The digital library has had visits from 78 countries, with the major share from India. The
distribution of documents in the digital library is uneven. Past exam question papers share the major
part of the collection. The number of research papers, articles and rare documents is less.
Originality/value – The study is the first of its type that tries to understand digital library design
and development using DSpace open source software in a university environment with a focus on the
analysis of distribution of items and measuring the value by usage statistics employing the Google
Analytics service. The digital library model can be useful for designing similar systems.
Keywords Open source software, Digital libraries, DSpace, India, Libraries
Paper type Case study

Introduction
Digital libraries (DL) are an important part of modern information management. Along
with the development and extensive application of information technologies and
networks, digital libraries are the booming development in the world (Zhou, 2005). DLs
combine technology and information resources to allow remote access to distributed The Electronic Library
Vol. 31 No. 2, 2013
information resources, thus breaking down the physical barriers between resources to pp. 217-225
become, in effect, a networked multimedia information system. The Digital Library q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
Federation (1999) defined DLs as: DOI 10.1108/02640471311312393
EL [. . .] organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select,
structure, offer intellectual access to interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure
31,2 the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they readily and economically
available for use by a defined community or set of communities.
The design, implementation and running of DLs are extensively practised by libraries
of all types for collecting, archiving and distributing born-digital and digitised items of
218 information. DLs help the preservation of the intellectual content produced and
required by a particular community.
Scholarly and professional interest in digital libraries grew rapidly from the 1990s
onwards, with initiatives of digitisation and digital libraries in India embarked on in
the mid-1990s. Presently there are various digital library working models such as
Digital Libraries of India (DLI), Vidyanidhi, Traditional Knowledge Digital Library
(TKDL), Gyandoot and Samadhan kendras (Bhatt, 2008). However, the application of
free/open source software (F/OSS) is new to Indian research libraries. The Registry of
Open Access Repositories provides the list of repositories in the world. It shows that
USA has 340 repositories, followed by the UK with 183; Japan has 88 repositories,
while India has only 61.
This paper describes the design and development of a digital library using DSpace
open source software in Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), India.
The data for the study was gathered from the experience of the authors with the digital
library for the last seven years in installing, customising, creating communities,
sub-communities, and collections corresponding to various departments and
submitting items to these collections. Data was collected using the Google Analytics
service for usage statistics of the digital library.

Overview of open source software

Free/open source software (F/OSS) has its roots from near the beginning of computing
and is typically free while providing users with source code that is usually shared via
the internet and can be adjusted for the users’ own needs (Baytiyeh and Pfaffman,
2010). Open source software differs from proprietary software in many respects. The
major difference between the two is the freedom to modify the software. OSS tools can
provide considerable cost savings over proprietary tools (Morrissey, 2010). The
implementation cost for a typical DL would include the cost of an entry-level server
and costs incurred for system support. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a surge of
interest among academics and practitioners in OSS (Lee et al., 2009) and today a wide
range of F/OSS are being applied in all fields of human activity.
F/OSS offer attractions for libraries, as a majority of libraries around the world,
especially in developing countries, cannot afford costly commercial software (Rafiq,
2009). According to Chudnov (1999), founder of the Open Source Systems for Libraries
project, there are three factors pushing the use of F/OSS in libraries:
(1) F/OSS licenses allow libraries to cut their software budget and use it for other
issues needing more funds.
(2) F/OSS products are not locked into a single vendor. Thus even if a library buys
an open source system from one vendor, it might choose to buy technical
support from another company or get it from in-house experts.
(3) The entire library community might share the responsibility of solving
information system accessibility issues.
DSpace software Using open
There are a number of F/OSS systems for capturing, preserving and distributing
digital content. DSpace, E-Prints, Fedora and Greenstone are the most commonly used
source software
F/OSS platforms for this purpose. Among the various F/OSS systems, Greenstone and
DSpace are the most widely used software for digital libraries (Witten, 2005). DSpace
was developed to be open source jointly by MIT Libraries and HP Labs in 2002. The
system is designed to run on the UNIX platform and all original code is in the Java 219
programming language. It uses a PostgreSQL relational database, Apache web server
and a Tomcat servlet engine, the Jena RDF toolkit, OAICat from OCLC and several
other useful software libraries. DSpace has implemented the Open Archive Initiative
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) for supporting interoperability with
other DSpace adopters and digital repositories (Smith et al., 2003). DSpace allows the
capture items in any format – in text, video, audio, and data. It distributes it over the
web and indexes work, so users can search and retrieve items. Moreover, it preserves
digital works over the long term.
DSpace is the most popular among the digital library solutions available in the open
source domain ( Jose, 2007). Presently DSpace is used by over 1,150 organisations in a
production or project environment (see www.dspacedev2.org). Since DSpace is a fairly
powerful software (Biswas and Paul, 2010), it has seen more installations over the
world. In studies that attempted a comparative evaluation of open source digital
library packages, DSpace emerged as a good option, having the best search and
browsing support as well as good support for metadata and providing more power to
administrators to put restrictions at collection level (Kumar, 2009). Moreover, a study
that compared the DL software of DSpace, Fedora, Greenstone, KStone and Eprints
recommended DSpace as the most appropriate system for a university environment
(Pyrounakis and Nikolaidou, 2009). Online community support is more active for
DSpace, which is evident from the DSpace mailing list and the DSpace wiki.
These features have influenced Cochin University of Science and Technology in
selecting DSpace software for its digital library. The option for F/OSS is based on
several factors including cost, facility to customise and modify the software, online
support, and the lack of a digital library model using proprietary software in India.

Cochin University of Science and Technology

Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) is one of the top universities in
India. CUSAT is organised academically into nine faculties (i.e. Engineering,
Environmental Studies, Humanities, Law, Marine Sciences, Medical Sciences and
Technology, Science, Social Science and Technology). CUSAT has at present
29 departments of study and research offering graduate and postgraduate
programmes across a wide spectrum of disciplines in frontier areas of diverse
faculties. According to a study carried out by Prathap and Gupta (2009) to rank the
research performance of 67 Indian engineering and technological institutes during
1999-2008 using data from the SCOPUS database, CUSAT ranked tenth with a total
number of 1,625 research papers published during the period. Among the universities,
CUSAT came up third on the list.

CUSAT Digital Library

Along with the wide variety of educational practices, F/OSS implementation in
administrative and teaching sectors is a priority area in CUSAT. The library system in
EL CUSAT has realised the concept and value of F/OSS. The University library and
department libraries use the Koha open source integrated library system for
31,2 automation. Workshops were offered to library staff on Linux, Koha and DSpace for
imparting necessary education and training on applying F/OSS in CUSAT.
There was need for a digital library in CUSAT to organise, preserve and distribute
the large amount of knowledge in the form of journal articles, research reports,
220 dissertations, theses, images, teaching materials and other documents produced by the
university in digital and analogue formats. The CUSAT Digital Library (CDL) was
established in 2003 to fulfil these requirements and DSpace open source software was
used for the purpose. The Centre for Information Resources Management (CIRM) at
CUSAT allotted a server for the CDL. DSpace was reinstalled in 2007 to upgrade to the
new version of the software. Apart from offering essential teaching and learning
materials online to the CUSAT community, the CDL provides open access to the
intellectual output of the University. The CDL can be accessed over the internet
through http://dspace.cusat.ac.in. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of CDL.

CDL – structure and policies

The structure of CDL is based on the default structure of DSpace involving Communities,
Sub-Communities and Collections. A community represents a teaching department. There
are 26 communities in the digital library. The various branches of a department, such as
faculty, library, laboratory, etc., are brought under sub-communities. All items meant for
a sub-community are ordered in separate collections. The CDL is controlled by an
administrator who has powers to create, delete, edit or modify Communities, Sub
Communities, Collections or Items. The collection development process is decentralised,
where faculty members, librarians and students are permitted to add items to the
Collection belonging to their Communities. Those who are authorised to upload items in a
Collection are known as an “E-Person”, and their access to the system is controlled by a

Figure 1.
CDL home page
user name and password. The CDL main server can be accessed over the web and the Using open
E-Person can add items from their location.
The respective teaching department determines the selection of material for the CDL.
source software
The content generated in the university is the basis of the CDL. The administrator has
given necessary instructions to all E-Persons on the choice and uploading of items. PDF
format is preferred over other document formats. The depositors have to agree that they
are not depositing any copyrighted materials into the CDL. Even though there is no 221
specific licence agreement, it is assumed that the materials deposited in the CDL are
created by the CUSAT community and permission is given for their free use. The
uploading process in CDL is composed of several steps including describe, upload, verify,
licence and complete. There is provision for author, title, type of the item, language,
identifiers, key words, abstract, file upload, verifying the submitted information and a
non-exclusive distributive licence. DSpace supports the qualified Dublin Core metadata
standard and a flexible framework to add user-defined metadata for localisation. While
uploading an item into CDL each E-person is supposed to add certain mandatory fields
apart from others as metadata. When an item is successfully uploaded, the system sends a
message to the E-Person (Figure 2).

CDL – collection analysis

Analysis of the contents of a digital library is helpful for understanding the volume,
type and distribution of documents in different categories. The data was collected by
using “By Issue date” option available in the user interface of the CDL. Presently the
CDL has around 2,312 items in it. Figure 3 shows the distribution of documents in the
CDL. Out of the total, 1,875 (81 per cent) documents are past exam question papers,
162 (7 per cent) are seminar reports and 75 (3.24 per cent) are articles. The share of
other documents such as presentations, news items, syllabi and journal contents pages,
etc., is 147 (6.35 per cent).

Figure 2.
Submission approval
message
EL
31,2

222

Figure 3.
Document distribution in
CDL

CDL access statistics

The information on the use of a DL is an important element in measuring its value. A
web-based DL will be visited by people from all across the world. The Google
Analytics service can be employed as an important tool for obtaining data on the usage
of DLs. The access statistics of CDL from January 2009 to September 2009 were
collected using this service. The data is presented in Figure 4. In nine months, around
10,346 people visited the digital library, making 23,722 page visits. The country-wise

Figure 4.
Statistics on number of
visitors
distribution of the usage of CDL is presented in Figure 5. It demonstrates that the Using open
digital library was accessed from all over the world – in fact from no fewer than
78 countries.
source software
Out of the total page visits, 14136 (59 per cent) were from India with 142 page visits
made from the USA. The Indian city-wise distribution of usage of CDL is presented in
Figure 6 – visits were made from all the major cities in India. The home city, Cochin,
recorded 8,890 (62 per cent) visits, followed by 1,285 (9 per cent) from Trivandrum, the 223
capital city of Kerala. Cities in Kerala had a total share of 10,784 (76 per cent) visits.
The usage statistics of CDL shows that it contains information sought by people
across the world. The majority of visits were recorded from the state of Kerala.
However, the analysis is limited to page visits only, and we need further analysis to
determine preferred collection that received most visits.

Conclusion
The CDL is an achievement for the academic community of CUSAT for storing
relevant documents in an organised, secure, and searchable archive and preserving it
for long-term use. From the data on usage statistics, it is clear that CDL is also
providing a service to users outside CUSAT. The contents of CDL are getting top
search results in Google and other search engines, leading to increased accessibility to

Figure 5.
Statistics on number of
visitors by country
EL
31,2

224

Figure 6.
Statistics on number of
visitors by Indian city

the documents. The use of F/OSS for the design and development of DL is the first
instance of its kind in the state of Kerala, where seven other universities exist. The CDL
can be viewed as a model based on F/OSS without any grant from a parent institution
or other agency. The role and importance of CDL can be expanded by inviting more
attention from the parent organisation towards creating digital content and archiving
it in CDL to provide open access to the ideas and knowledge generated by CUSAT.

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About the authors

Surendran Cherukodan has been working as Junior Librarian in the School of Engineering,
Cochin University of Science Technology since 2000. He acquired a Master’s Degree in Library
and Information Science from the University of Calicut, Kerala, India. He has passed the UGC
Test for Lectureship and Junior Research Fellowship. He has published several papers in
national and international seminars. His research interests include digital library, application of
open source software in libraries, etc. He is a member of Kerala Library Association. Surendran
Cherukodan is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: csura@cusat.ac.in
G. Santhosh Kumar has been working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer
Science at Cochin University of Science and Technology since 2001. He acquired a Master’s Degree
in Physics and an MTech degree in Computer and Information Science from Cochin University. His
research interests are in networked embedded systems, software architectures, e-learning and
free/open source software systems. He is a Professional Member of ACM and IEEE.
S. Humayoon Kabir started his career as a librarian in Cochin University and has been a
Library and Information Science teacher at Mahatma Gandhi University and Pondicherry
University. He is currently working as a Reader in the Department of Library and Information
Science, University of Kerala where he is an Associate Professor. He has authored several papers
and is one of the Editors of KELPRO Bulletin, published from Kerala. He has a PhD in Library
and Information Science and he is a research guide. His research interests include open access,
open source, digital library software, etc.

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