Reading Assignment #10

Title: Selection of Open Source Software for Institutional Repositories

Author: Ajay T. Agashe , R.S. Lihitkar and Shalini R. Lihitkar

Publisher: Library of Progress: Library Science, Information Technology & Computer 

URL: Agashe, Ajay T., R.S. Lihitkar, and Shalini R. Lihitkar. "Selection of open source software for institutional repositories." Library of Progress: Library Science, Information Technology & Computer 29.1 (2009): 85. Gale Power Search. Web. 15 Oct. 2011.

Abstract of the article:

Information and communication Technology has created immense methods for creating, storing, maintaining, accessing and preserving the traditional printed documents in digital form. It offers great opportunities to fast, effective and efficient electronic communication. National institutions and organizations are developing their institutional repositories. Therefore Librarians should take initiatives to develop the institutional repositories for providing faster scholarly communication to their users. The paper consolidates the information of nineteen open source software and also highlights the selection criteria to choose the open source software for building an institutional repositories.

Three things I learned from my Reading Assignment:

• There are two roads to Open Access (OA):       
•  the "golden road" of OA journal-publishing , where journals provide OA to their articles (either by charging the author-institution for refereeing/publishing outgoing articles instead of charging the user-institution for accessing incoming articles, or by simply making their online edition free for all
• the "green road" of OA self-archiving, where authors provide OA to their own published articles, by making their own e-prints free for all
• Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) (also abbreviated as FLOSS or FOSS) are programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program.
• There are factors to be considered in selecting open source software. This includes the following: background of supplier, function of the software, training facilities, maintenance and support facility, acceptance of library’s specifications, experience of users, multi script acceptance, user group, trial run, updated versions, documentation, hardware, data, and warranty.

Application / Implication of the new things I learned to my work / to me as a person:

It’s nice to know that there are open source softwares available for free. This would be a good alternative for me and my institution in case financial problem arises. Although it can be utilized for free, I would strictly take into consideration the factors in selecting an OA software. This is to avoid future problems or conflicts.