Creating An Integrated Library System Using Open

Source Software for Afghanistan Academic

LibrariesLiving the Future ConferencePoster Session

April, 2006Atifa Rawan, Yan Han & Jose Garcia

Integrated Library System

Integrated Library System – Evaluation and Selection

Web Creation – Resource Development Training Collaboration

Afghan Higher Education Libraries Since 1979 the education system has been virtually

destroyed; schools and colleges have been closed, looted, or physically reduced; student bodies and faculties have been emptied by war, migration, and economic hardship; and libraries were gutted.

Kabul University was demolished by 1994; completely closed down by 1998.

Kabul University Library’s collections are mostly damaged or destroyed: Current Holdings

60-70K English titles 2-3K Persian titles 2K Persian theses

Afghan Academic Library Initiatives Since April 2002 - University of Arizona’s involvement in

rebuilding Afghanistan academic libraries. 2005-Invitation to participate in Digital Libraries Alliance (DLA),

as part of Afghan e-Quality Alliances: 21st Century Universities for Afghanistan Initiative. Funded by USAID/Washington State University. DLA goals in Afghanistan: Build capacity for libraries and librarians Work with open source digital libraries platforms Provide and enhance access to scholarly information resources Open content that all of Afghanistan higher education institutions

can benefit from

Building the Afghanistan Integrated Library System (ILS) Traditional critical components: acquisitions, cataloging, catalog

(search and find), circulation, and member management. Recent developments in digital libraries resulted in distributed

systems: Still provides primary function to access library materials Other services (i.e., ILL) can be further developed

Presently implementing ILS for four academic universities in Kabul: Kabul University, Polytechnic University, Kabul Medical University, and Kabul Education University.

Further development of ILS will eventually support over 30K students and 2K faculty in Afghan higher education

Overview of ILS Current market dominated by commercial ILS vendors Open source systems offer a viable solution. Characteristics of open

source systems: undeveloped, few products available, do not provide full features.

Decision to build ILS with “OPEN” concept: open access, open source, and open standards. Decision influenced by: globalization, open access, open source, open

standards, and open users’ behavior and expectations Current open source ILS software:

KOHA-full-features ILS developed in New Zealand in 2000 Underlying architectures-LINUX, Apache, MySQL, and PERL (LAMP) stack.

OpenBiblio-short history; still in beta 0.1.0 version since 2002 Underlying architecture-LAMP (Linux, Apache MySQL, and PHP)

WEBILS-based on UNESCO’s CDS/ISIS database; developed by Institute for Computer and Information Engineering in Poland; ILS features, including: cataloging, catalog (search and find), loan, and report modules. Underlying architecture-requires Windows/ Windows based servers

(Xitami/Microsoft IIS and ISIS database) GNUTECA-developed in Brazil; some ILS features such as cataloging,

catalog and loan; software interface written in Portuguese.

System Analysis KOHA – Open source ILS software chosen for its

functionality, maturity and support: Software architecture – open source LAMP, which is

popular, stable, and predominant. Staff skills and competencies in open source software. Full-featured open source ILS components, such as

multiple branch support and users management, critical for Union Catalog.

Current use: two public libraries in New Zealand with 30K patron base and in some places in the United States.

Software stable and most bugs have been fixed KOHA support-mailing list by KOHA developers and users

as a communication tool to ask and answer questions.

Major Challenges

Arabic/Persian Languages Support KOHA version 2.2 cannot correctly handle East Asian language

records, including Arabic/Persian records. Language support crucial for Afghan Universities. Persian/Dari is one of the official languages of the country. KOHA generates web-based Graphic User Interface (GUI) via

Perl included templates, which used HTML “meta” tag with Western character set (ISO-8559-1) to encode characters.

Internet Explorer and Firefox use “meta” tag to decode characters with predefined character set.

Templates identified and modified to allow characters to be encoded in Unicode to solve problem.

In ILS, Persian/Dari characters can be entered into the cataloging module and displayed correctly in GUI.

ILS Continued

Enhancements New ISBN-13 going to

replace ISBN-10 after January 1, 2007.

ILS for Afghanistan libraries enhanced to handle both standards.

KOHA’s delegation of GUI and major functionality, interface such as fonts and web pages can be modified through templates.

Hardware Support Considerations:

Country of Afghanistan still in developmental stage in its infrastructure: electricity, transportation and communication.

IT companies such as Dell, HP, and IBM have very limited services and support in Afghanistan; hardware procurement, i.e., server services, is difficult

Temporary solution: extra parts and redundant servers.

Kabul University Library Home Page

ILS Sample Page

ILS Sample Page

ILS Sample Page

ILS Sample Page

ILS Sample Page

ILS Sample Page

ILS Sample Page

TrainingTraining/Workshops

Two separate workshops were conducted by Atifa Rawan and Yan Han of the University of Arizona Libraries at Kabul University, Afghanistan

Dates of Training/Workshops: 1) November 13 -17, 2005; 2) March 16-23, 2006

Focus: To introduce the fundamental concepts of digital

libraries regarding collection development, content evaluation and information delivery.

Topics Covered: The workshops comprised of several theoretical and practical sessions to emphasize the importance of digital libraries in Afghan Universities. The following describes workshop components.

Fundamentals of digital libraries, with the intension of giving participants an overview of digital libraries concepts and their applications in a very broad number of disciplines such as education, science, culture, and health.

Introduced two critical components of digital libraries: information resources evaluation and metadata. Components of information resources evaluation were introduced to attendees.

Metadata fundamentals and two widely used metadata standards (MARC and Dublin Core) were presented.

A hands-on session on adding and creating data using an integrated library system was held to strengthen the use of metadata and its practical implication within libraries.

Introduction to information delivery using HTML and XML. A follow-up session on designing a library web page allowed participants to use open source and commercial HTML editors

Metadata fundamentals and two widely used metadata standards (MARC and Dublin Core) were presented.

A hands-on session on adding and creating data using an integrated library system was held to strengthen the use of metadata and its practical implication within libraries.

Introduction to information delivery using HTML and XML. A

follow-up session on designing a library web page allowed participants to use open source and commercial HTML editors.

Participants

Workshops #1 – 27 participants represented these academic institutions at the workshop. The participants included library coordinators, library staff, technical staff, and faculty members from the following institutions: Kabul University Kabul Medical University American University of Afghanistan Institute of Polytechnic Kabul University of Education

Workshops #2 – Included specialized ILS and databases training for Kabul University Library and IT staff

Collaboration

Afghanistan Map

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