Open Source Software and Union catalogues: a case study of creating union catalogue of FORSA libraries at national

level

Sanjay Dongare Scientific Information Resource Centre , National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (TIFR) dsanjay@gmrt.ncra.tifr.res.in

Presentation covers

1. What is Open Source Software? 2. Need for Open Source Software. 3. Concept of Union Catalogue of Serials 4. Need for Union Catalogue 5. FORSA Libraries 6. Practical application of Open Source in Creating Union Catalogue 7. Live demo 8. Conclusion

About Open Source Software

Open Source Software: Open Source Software is , software that users have the ability to run, distribute, study, and modify the program for any purpose. Need: Cost of commercial software's is very high. Commercial developers do not reveal the source code of their program. You can modify the software to your specific needs. Reduced dependence on software vendors (no forced updates or license renewal purchase) Global collaboration with skilled developers.

Union catalogue

Need: Increasing cost of journals is not sustainable to all types of libraries and they often need to depend on other libraries for various resources Union Catalogue is based on a model of co-operation between a group of libraries wishing to build a common infrastructure. Major points for the establishment of a central Union Catalogue are: -Resource sharing between the libraries -Central access point for users -Platform for service co-operation, such as interlibrary loan -Platform for agreement of bibliographic standards -Efficient management.

Prominent Union Catalogue in India

NUCSSI: National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India by NISCAIR IndCat: Online Union Catalogue of Indian Universities by INFLIBNET - CSIR Libraries Union Catalogue of Serials by ICAST Union Catalogue of Biomedical Serials by Indian Medlars Centre. MYLIBNET's :Union list of Science and Technological serials of S & T libraries in Mysore city.

Need of Shared Union Catalogue

Most of the union catalogs are maintained by individual institutes and it is found that the union catalogue doesn't have updated information Every institute uses different library management system, they may be either commercial or open source. So it becomes difficult to integrates the catalogue of different libraries easily. Integrating the catalogue of similar library management system require huge cost and time. Since the utility of a union catalogue depends on the currency of information contained in it , we need to explore a new way i.e Shared Union Catalogue

Applications of Open Source Software

PHP and Mysql: PHP and MySql are the excellent tools for application development based on the open source models. We have selected FORSA libraries for creating union catalogue of scientific serials. FORSA stands for “Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy and Astrophysics”. Following are the institutes belongs to FORSA group. Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences Bose Institute Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, (NCRA) Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) Raman Research Institute (RRI) Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)

Technologies and Methodology

Technologies used : Operating System: Linux- CentsOS 5.4 Scripting Language: PHP 5.3 RDBMS : MySql 5.0.45 Webserver : Apache Web Server Methodology : Data Collection Data Organization Data Insertion

Data updation

Methodology

Data Collection: Simple bibliographic data has been collected from each institute in the form of

Title Vol. No Year Missing 1. Excel- Sql Conversion ------------------------------------------------------------- 2. TEXT- AWAK text processing tool- SQL Analytical Chemistry 27+ 1965+ 35

Data Insertion: We have created separate table for each institute and data has been inserted into individual table created in Mysql.

Continue…

Grant Privileges : Super User: A super user can grant privileges on all database object types to other users GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON database .* TO username@host IDENTIFIED BY ' passwd '

WITH GRANT OPTION; Limited privileges has been assigned to each participating libraries via below grant privileges statement

GRANT UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT (column_1, column_2) ON Table TO 'myuser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD ' passwd' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Features

Web-based Search Engine. Secure Login Script. Web-based data entry form. Web-based Insert/Update/Delete facility to centralized database

Screenshots

Demo

Online demo of Union Catalogue Search engine: http://ncralib1.ncra.tifr.res.in/forsa/forsasearchform.php http://ncralib1.ncra.tifr.res.in/update/login.php

Findings

This Union Catalogue fulfills the objectives for which it was developed. But a greater number of organizations need to participate in order to make it more effective. With increased participation it is possible to have an union catalogue of serials available at other libraries. These theme can be used for sharing other resources also.

Conclusion

This presentation may open a new way of collaboration through partnership to share the resources among distributed observatories.

Thank You Sanjay Dongare NCRA-TIFR dsanjay@gmrt.ncra.tifr.res.in