A practical guide to digitizing a collection using Open Source Software: A Southern African perspective

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the practical implementation of a digital library using open source software. Southern Africa has not fully embraced or incorporated open source software into their information management operations. This lack of adaptation is attributed to a number of reasons amongst which are lack of general awareness and the absence of appropriately trained librarians to take advantage of such technological sources. The article gives guidelines and recommendations on what to consider when planning to digitize a collection. The following issues will be looked at: digital rights management, institutional repositories, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS is an XML Schema designed for the purpose of creating XML document instances that express the hierarchical structure of digital library objects) and its applications, the open archives initiatives, and open source software for digital libraries. The article also focuses on the practical steps in using open source software for digitizing. Open source software has been chosen because of its free availability.