Digital libraries with J‐ISIS: a preliminary account of possibilities and performance

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility to use J‐ISIS software for digital libraries (DL), and to identify/implement the necessary software elements.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach was three‐fold: first, testing the required features for DL, e.g. large‐file handling capabilities, full‐text indexing, UNICODE; second, implementing into the existing code an easy interface to build collections, respecting the ISIS‐philosophy of freedom of structure (e.g. integration into and creation of any meta‐data set); and third, performing preliminary performance tests comparing to the Greenstone software.

Findings

The claims of large‐file handling, UNICODE and full‐text searching were confirmed, however some JAVA code had to be adjusted for reaching the goals re document sizes and speed. The interface is based on existing data‐entry worksheets: when a DL field is recognized, a special icon allowing uploading of the document is shown, the text is extracted (using Apache Tika) and normal storage and indexing is applied while the ISIS‐PFT creates the URL to the original document. All this was found to work very fast in a 200 documents test, in fact faster than GSDL, with especially more efficiency in storage space.

Originality/value

The paper shows that UNESCO's ISIS‐software users have now the possibility to use known technology for DL purposes, without needing to learn a new software. When no end‐user submission or large batch‐processing of documents is needed, this solution is quite practical, esp. for smaller libraries. This project is the first to experiment with J‐ISIS for DL purposes and hopes to raise interest in the acceptance of this new ISIS‐generation.

Citation

Berhe, H.H. and de Smet, E. (2012), "Digital libraries with J‐ISIS: a preliminary account of possibilities and performance", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 7-10. https://doi.org/10.1108/07419051211236530