Building Digital Library of “The Ravi” with Greenstone at GC University Lahore

Building Digital Library of “The Ravi”

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Abdul Waheed/Abid Iqbal Abid

Presented by:

ABDUL WAHEEDChief LibrarianGCU, Lahore

ABID IQBAL ABID

LibrarianGCU Lahore

[email protected]@gcu.edu.pk

BUILDING DIGITAL LIBRARY OF “THE RAVI” WITH GREENSTONE AT GC UNIVERSITY LAHORE

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


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WHAT IS A DIGITAL LIBRARY?

• An automated library is not a digital library because of the material in printed form. In digital libraries, the services are fully automated where all resources are in Digital form.

• There are two possibilities – the library that contains material in digital form and the library that contains digital material.

• The difference is very subtle but the important point is that a digital library has material stored in a computer system in a form that allows it to be manipulated and delivered, which is otherwise in conventional form not possible.

• Electronic library and digital library mean one and the same thing. British call it electronic and the American call it a digital library.


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POSSIBLE ROLE OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

• Dissemination of humanitarian information is a realm• Disaster relief• Preservation and propagation of indigenous culture, • Locally-produced collections of information


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STATUS OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES IN PAKISTAN

• The idea of digital library is new in Pakistan. No research study was conducted to find out the status of digital libraries in Pakistan.

• Only a few articles and reports are available which have discussed the issue in Pakistani perspective.

• The reputed academic institutions are now thinking about developing digital libraries. Some efforts have also been made by LUMS, Iqbal Academy, Quaid-e-Azam Library, Punjab University Library and Shirkat Gah etc to set up or plan their own digital libraries.


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PRESERVATION: WHY

• Documentary preservation makes sense only when we take accountability of the preservation of the objects, built-in environment and create landscapes for the same.

• But we cannot preserve everything, and indeed should not seek to do so.

• How we decide what must be preserved, and how we preserve it in a meaningful way, is the question which lies at the heart of preservation management.


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PRESERVATION: DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

• This digital age has raised the issues of digital divide between information rich and information poor countries.

• Developed countries, 60% to 70% of information is available in digital format whereas in developing countries like India, this availability is 2.5%.

• Many potentially valuable materials have already been lost in IRAQ, AFHGANISTAN and even in the recent flood in PAKISTAN.

• So libraries to preserve and make accessible the publictions in digital form – online or on CD, digitised images, and born-digital objects.


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DIGITIZATION

• Digitization is the conversion of materials or analog media into electronic form for creating digital collection. Analog media includes books, journal articles, micro form, photos, audio, video, etc.

• Simply it is high speed data transmission technique. In digitization, work is compressed in digit (0,1) form. 0 and 1 is a symbolic form about polarization of ions in magnetic media, where we store the data.

• Digitization is necessitated for both accessibility and preservation. Digital collection is a most important component of the digital library.

• Pakistan may be a part of mass digitization like Google Book Search and Digitization of Books.


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WHY GSDL AND WHY NOT OTHERS OSS

• The GSDL is an internationally Open Source Software (OSS) system for developing digital libraries.

• GSDL is distributed on the web and also produced on CD-ROM. The software is being downloaded an average of 1,500 times per month

• Greenstone has been used for collections of ranging 20 GB of raw text, 2 billion words, 60 million unique terms.

• Many salient features like Platforms, Educational usage, Standards, An extensible plug-in scheme and Languages etc.

• Others known OSS are ‘DSpace’, ‘Dienst’, ‘Eprints’, ‘Fedora’, ‘Greenstone’ etc.

• Initially, the D-Space was selected for the Project but it was not fulfilling library requirements, so selected GSDL. The main reason of selecting this software was that the two key persons were familiar and had worked in this software.


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WHAT IS DIGITAL MATERIAL?

• Digital material can be taken as computer readable material in general. The creation of digital information from conventional material is generally a two stage process.

• First stage is digitization – this is essentially the conversion of the physical medium into a digital representation of that physical medium. e.g. scanning a page producing a computer readable (digital) image of the paper within the computer. The computer only recognizes a digital picture of the page.

• The second stage is to have the computer extract information from the digitized image. For text, it is done by OCR software to convert the text image into ASCII format for editing and manipulation of information and to store in textual format.


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GOVERNMENT COLLEGE UNIVERSITY (GCU) LAHORE

• The Government College University (GCU) Lahore, one of the premier institutions of higher learning in the sub-continent was established in 1864 as a college.

• After 138 years of its wonderful history the Government College, Lahore was raised to the status of a University in 2002 (Government College University, Lahore, 2010).

• HEC ranked the GC University as the first among the Universities established in 2002.

• GCU has produced two noble laureates and Pakistan has one, five prime ministers of Pakistan are Ravians, number of scientists, literary figures, orators and sportsmen.


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THE GCU LIBRARY

• The GCU library is very ‘welcoming place’ in the university. The library came into existence in 1872. At present three main and seven departmental libraries are offering services to faculty, researchers and students of the University.

• There were 308438 books in June, 2010.• CSS, the very first center for visually impaired persons

(VIP’s) in Pakistan was established in the GCU, which is associated with the Library.

• The GCU is the first public sector university library in Pakistan launched its website in 1998. Both GCU and GCUL websites are administrated by the library management from the first day

• The Library takes pride in having 43 personal collections.• The GCU Library also established a museum.


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THE GCU LIBRARY

• The GC University Library Lahore contributed the first ever digital book from Pakistan to the World Digital Library in 2010.

• The “Program” has declared the GC University, Library website “the best library website of Pakistan.”

• In 2006 HEC and Elsevier jointly declared the GCU library website as the best website of the country.

• The year 2004 was historical that the first time the post of chief librarian was upgraded with equal status of the professor in any university, college or any institute of the province.

• The present incumbent was directly selected against the newly created post. Prior to joining the GCU he was serving in the University of the Punjab as Chief Librarian.


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THE RAVI

• The Ravi began to be published in June 1906. In the beginning, it was published yearly, and was confined to records only. Later on this function of the Ravi was abandoned and it was raised to the status of a monthly magazine for students.

• It has continued to grow and flourish with grace down to the present year. The Ravi has now become a permanent feature of the University, increasing in flow, force and volume.

• The Ravi was primarily an English Journal until 1919, when the Urdu section became a regular feature. Two years later a Hindi section was added. Later on Punjabi (in Persian and Gurmukhi script) also became regular aspect.

• Presently it is published annually in English, Urdu and Punjabi languages.

• HEC has also approved the Ravi as a recognized journal with other nine journals published in Urdu language in other countries.


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THE RAVI: ITS SPECIAL NUMBERS AND EDITORS

• Since its inception to-date 102 volumes of the Ravi have been published. The first special issues was in 1924 titled as “Special Jubilee No”. The other numbers were

• Hammy No (1924), Sondhi No (1936), Old Ravians (1950), Centenary Number (1964), 125 Year No (1989) Iqbal No (1974), Quaid No (1976), Hijra No (1981), Azad No (1983), Pakistan Golden Jubilee No (1997), Ghalib No (1998), Ishfaq Ahmad No (2005)…..

• The Ravi has been published in the editorship of many well known editors. Some prominent are

• Abdul-Salam, Anees Nagi, Ajmal Niazi, Athar Tahir, Ather Waqar Azeem, G.D.Sondhi, Haneef Ramay, Kamal Azfar, Mahmood Shaam, Moeen Qureshi, Mujahid Hussain, Muzafar Ali Syed, Noon Meem Rashid, P.C.Chatterji,

• Patras Bukhari, R.K.Kaul, Ram Lal Manta, Sarmad Sahbai, Shahid Javed Burki, Shahzad Ahmad, Siraj Din, Sohail Safdar, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj and Taj Muhammad Khayal.


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DIGITIZATION IN THE GCU

• Digitization project was virtually initiated in 2005. The library did not have latest scanners, so the resources were digitize as JPG images without assigning OCR Initially, library started the digitization activities by using internal funds; however, later on HEC has provided one million grant in 2009

• It was a combined attempt of professionals’ theoretical knowledge with the practical know-how of computing staff at GCU Library.

• We have not a single copy of Ravi which is born digital, so decided to digitize all the collection.

• At the first stage we will scan the copies of Ravi published after the 1947, however bibliographic details of remaining Ravi’s will be provided to the users.


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PROJECT GOAL

• Primary Goals• Preservation of the rare copies of the Ravi was the

project’s primary goal.• Create digital archival copies • Safeguard the collections from the risk of physical

deterioration and destruction• Secondary Goal

• Make it easier for users to find relevant information from the special collection (the Ravi) housed in the GCU Library

• Create multiple derivative copies• Enhance indexing and search ability by creating

searchable text• Reduce handling of the fragile print materials


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THE EQUIPMENT USED

• Kodak i1320 was selected after careful market survey and analysis of the equipments available in the Pakistan. The specification of the scanner is given as under;

• Scanning speed: 60 pages per min. (120 images per min.)

• Scanning side: Duplex (both sides) • Feeder capacity: 75 sheets • Interface: USB • Flatbed: Optional • Drivers: TWAIN, ISIS • Compatibility: Windows Vista, Windows XP


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DIGITIZATION PROCESS

• Original copies of Ravi were used as a source for digital images

• Digital replicas of the Ravi were prepared in the Postgraduate Library of GC University, Lahore

• Kodak i1320 equipment was used in the project• After Editing and formatting each scanned page treated as

a separate image and saved as an archival master in the TIFF format

• Copies of master files were sent to the IT section of the library for incorporating in the GSDL software


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RAVI DIGITIZATION: QUALITY CONTROL PROCESS


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DIGITIZATION GUIDELINES

• The standards established for the digitization process are as under:

• Resolution: 300 dpi • File Format: TIFF• Compression: None • Bit-depth: 8-bit greyscale for black and white• 24-bit for pages with colour images


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NAMING CONVENTION (THE RAVI)


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BUILDING OF GCUDL

Steps for building of GCUDL

• Addition of Collection in Greenstone• Management of Metadata Set• Data Entry• Addition of Classifier for Browsing• Addition of Search Indexes• Display Text for Search Menu• Display of Search Results• Collection Specific Macros• Collection Rebuild


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OVERVIEW OF GREENSTONE SEARCHING AND BROWSING


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INEVITABLE CHALLENGES

• Sustainability issues with exclusive focus on the policy and strategies, economic aspects, political and administrative context and cooperative ventures.

• Non availability of OCR (Optical character recognition) for the Urdu language

• Lack of infrastructure both in instruments/accessories and human resources

• No Single university or agency can really work in isolation to reach the goals in the right manner. Hence HEC may work as agency and centers may be established at provincial levels.

• Initially statistics of rare books and other materials available by the universities libraries may be collected.


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INEVITABLE CHALLENGES

• National Digitization Policy should be developed for the national, academic and public libraries level and implemented through Federal and Provincial governments by National Library and HEC authorities.

• Training of master trainer’s librarians both at national and international levels by involving the bodies like UNESCO, WDL etc.

• Collaboration with USA, UK and Indian Embassies at first stage by identifying possible areas of collaboration may be initiated. Later the same may be extended with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and National Libraries of Asia and Oceania (CDNLAO). However it is essential to establish an association of libraries at university libraries level to start formal collaboration.


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GCUL’s POSSIBLE FUTURE DIGITAL INITIATIVES

• University calendars, statues before 1947• Reports of administration departments Punjab Government before

Partition. • Documents related to pre-independence history of Pakistan• GCU publications and Press Clippings• Rare Books published in 19th and 20th century • Disclose the scholarship of the Government College Lahore

(1864-2001) • Published (peer reviewed) papers of the GCU faculty • Group photographs of selected Old Ravians from all walks of life• GCUL has great interest in to be the part of :

• International Collaborative Program• Exchange Programs• Resources Sharing Networks


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BEFORE FINISHING

• Last but not least it is concluded that as we are “first time buyers.” in the context of starting any formal digitization project perhaps in Pakistan but of course first time in the GC University Lahore.

• It is common that first time buyers are notorious for making unwise choices – either buying or attempting too much or too little – whereas those who have struggled with their first wave of projects make better and savvier choices the second time around.

• After completing the project we are confident to do more and to set up a new example for other institutions of the country and to introduce GCU Libraries at international level following the example of WDL.