Building a Multimedia Digital Library of Audio/Video Resources Using Open Source Software and Open Digital Library Standards

Abstract: The emerging information landscape portrays a complex domain before the library fraternity with multiplicity of physical as well as digital formats in which they manifest in diverse publication types. Libraries today operate on a truly multimedia environment. In the present academic and special library setting the educational videos, instructional visual aids and audio learning resources form a significant part of the collection. Multimedia collection, especially the non-textual knowledge resources in the library at the same time pose a variety of problems not only in the provision of their services to users, but with their sole dependency on a host of gadgets also such as media players, viewers, etc. The current information environment unequivocally prompts libraries to leverage on the latest digital technologies towards building multimedia digital libraries and in setting up dynamic electronic information systems. These newer breeds of information services offer lots of power and visibility to libraries and the user community without compromising on their quality and performance. Yet, they also pose problems in the course of their preparations while submitting them in a digital library. Swift developments in media-related technologies, rapid obsolescence and their redundancy, need for timeto-time media and format migrations, resource intensive maintenance, etc. adds to the complexity and complications of these collections. Leading edge technical skills and technology backing for these facilities demand sophisticated human resource requirements and high end IT infrastructure. Multimedia digital libraries also indeed require the strong footings of Resource Description Framework (RDF) vision supplemented with descriptive metadata standards such as Dublin Core, Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) or Metadata Encoding and Transmission (METS). They also need the strength of Extensible Markup Language (XML) encoding schemas, related Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) transformations between the non-traditional datastreams and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) front-end. This paper reports the experience of IIMK in setting up a multimedia digital library using the Open Source Greenstone digital library software