Technical Assessment of Greenstone toward Development of Digital Libraries in Iran

Abstract

Lack of integrated software is serious obstacle toward the development of digital libraries in Iran. Considering the problem, this research focused on Greenstone digital library software (GDLS) to investigate its technical capabilities toward creating and managing digital collections in Iranian libraries. The study was conducted through evaluation research using a 9-spectrums checklist in two phases. In the first stage, experts from library and information science and computer science and in second stage, three user groups (with PhD, MA and BA degrees) completed the checklist against capabilities of GDLS. Findings indicated that, there was no significant difference between two groups of specialist about capabilities of GDLS. Analyzing three user groups also approved GDLS competencies at this respect. There were some technical errors and bugs that experts proposed to be corrected toward best fitness of GDLS to Iranian collections.

Keywords

• Digital library software
• Greenstone
• open source software
• technical assessment