Library Management For Digital Libraries

Libraries are now hybrid services integrating face to face services and print material with digital content and services. Integrating very diverse e-content implies not just knowledge of web design and IT infrastructure, but a command of issues around standards, licensing and intellectual property rights. It means understanding user needs and behaviour. Delivering a service in this context is a management challenge as much as a purely technical one. The challenge of creating usable digital library services requires both a strategic vision and the project management skills to deliver valued ICT projects on time, to budget.

•Management and Strategy for DLM
•Digital Multimedia Libraries
•Information Systems in Organisations
•Change Management
•Business Intelligence
•Libraries, Information and Society
•Academic and Research Libraries

Secure Storage and Easy Access

We store digital libraries hierarchically . When you need to retrieve a file, simply access our richly featured web-based interface and browse, search and retrieve your content with ease. Stability and Longevity We offer a stable environment for storage, and a range of services including pre-defined workflows, achieving optimum efficiency and high quality service delivery.

Business Challenges

Capital Drain

Storing digital content in-house can be a tremendous drain on capital resources, even for the largest national broadcasters. Whether you’re a broadcaster or a platform provider, you need to be able to convert this investment into an operational, rather than a capital expenditure. In order to do so, however, you need a media management partner that offers digital library storage as a service.

Security and Data Resilience

You need to know that your assets are secure, and in a resilient environment. You also need a digital library partner that’s here to stay.

Unpredictable Volumes

It can be difficult to forecast volume requirements for digital library storage. The twin pitfalls of overpaying and underestimating have a significant negative impact on service delivery, and consequently on audience figures and revenues. You need to have access to boundless global capacity and cloud capabilities on a Pay as You Go basis.

Focus on your Core Business

Dedicating in-house resources to managing your digital library is complex and costly. You need a provider you can trust, freeing up valuable resources so that you can then focus on your core business.

Benefits:

There are some well known benefits that open source could bring to libraries, these include:

Lower costs: Open source offers a lower total cost of ownership than traditional library systems. There are none of the traditional license costs associated with open source. Libraries are able take advantage of the reduced costs the cloud offers by reducing local support and hosting costs (if it is supported and hosted by a third party).
No lock-in: Libraries are, in a sense, removed from the traditional lock-in associated with library systems. There is a greater opportunity to pick and choose components, and take advantage of what is, generally, better interoperability with open source solutions. Related to this is also the idea that open source is more sustainable: If a vendor goes out of business the software may disappear or be sold-on. With open it is always available, and there is usually a community involved in it to continue its development.
Adaptation and Innovation: Connected to the above is the greater capacity that libraries have to innovate with open systems and software. There is no need to await the next update or release, instead in either isolation or collaboratively, can develop the functionality required. This enables much more agile services and systems, as well as ensuring user expectations are exceeded.
A richer library systems ecosystem: A less direct impact of open source is a richer library systems ecosystem. This is both in terms of the library solutions available (a healthier marketplace with both proprietary and open solutions) and in terms of collaboration and engagement between libraries themselves. Libraries are able to collaborate and share code on the functionality and fixes they require. Indeed, there are open source systems such as Evergreen, which were developed as an open source library system for a consortial approach. While these benefits are the headline grabbing ones, it might be argued there are more subtle, but none the less powerful benefits in the adoption of open source in libraries, especially within higher and further education. There are broader trends and themes emerging (and some fairly well entrenched) within the new information environment that make open source particularly timely for libraries. These developments include: open (linked) data; managing research data; open scholarship and science; Open content such as OERs; crowdsourcing, and, of course, open access. Open source solutions for the library fit very well into this broader open momentum affecting the academic world at present. Away from the academic world it is difficult not to notice the close correlation between the open, learning, sharing and peer-production culture libraries embody and that of the open source culture. So it may be that one of the greatest benefits of adopting open source is that it mirrors the very philosophy and values of the library itself.
Is it something all libraries should consider, or are there limitations to its usefulness as a solution (if so, what are the limitations)?
There are very few barriers to any library adopting an open source library system. The business models that surround open source library systems are currently based on third parties offering support and hosting services for libraries looking to implement a solution. Effectively, this means any library could take advantage of an open system. There can sometimes be very pragmatic limitations to the systems themselves – the open source management system Koha, for example, doesn’t include an inter-library loan module (although they recognise this and have a wiki to collect the requirements for the module’s development). For me, open source offers libraries an exciting opportunity: better understand the skills, roles and processes that are critical to the library’s community of users (whether academic, public or other). Open source can be about simply your system and support to a third party; but it can also be about re-evaluating services, systems and understanding where the real value of the library lies. This may mean that support for the open source LMS is d to a third party, so the local developers can work with librarians to ensure the services are innovative and meeting the needs of users. Open source is an opportunity for the library to become more agile, and adopt a more start-up like culture to the development and deployment of services.