Contest to Design a Digital Library The Rotary Bangalore West along with the Rotaract Bangalore West is planning establish Rotary Scholastic Centre, a digital library for children at the Govt. Girls School in 13th Cross Malleswaram. The objective of the Project is to inculcate the spirit of learning and pursuit of knowledge by providing a learning centre for children upto the age group of 18 years and also to the Senior citizens above the age group of 60. It is our desire that we empower the children through the Power of knowledge, as we strongly believe that any investment in the development of children is a direct contribution to Nation building. In view of this, Rotary and Rotaract Bangalore West are holding a contest for students and freelancers to design a digital library. Ideas/Designs for the digital library are invited from interested parties. The team which proposes the best idea will implement the library and will also win a grand prize. The specifications for the library are given below. The main layout of the library will be on the Web based model with a main server + backup servers servicing upto 25 clients initially and should be scalable to serve upto 100 clients in the future. The server will have to run a webserver software hosting the pages where in the user at the clientside can run through an index of books sorted according to subjects and can access the book entirely or only parts of its contents based on topic/chapter. A data warehousing software will run in the background and will hold the books in a digitized format. The server side also should be capable of automatically generating index of items added to the Digital repository. Text based Digital documents could be made full text searchable through a suitable interface. When contents from CD are added to the library the server also need to act as CD cache. There is a need to have an intranet running for the local network and a firewall to prevent any intrusions and security threat. The network will be on a WLAN and we need to provide enough encryption on the packets that are sent out to prevent snooping on the network. There should also be an inbuilt mechanism which will keep track of all the books being accessed at any given time and it should be able to generate reports on issues such as no. of books accessed,total no. of hits on server, most frequently accessed books / subjects, internet access times, quantity of data downloads etc. For the internet access, mechanisms must be provided to allow only logged in users to access internet and to monitor the time and usage of the net. Suitable cache must be built into the system to speed up internet access to 'often used sites' On the server side we need automated replication on the backup servers such that there is no downtime experienced in case of failure on the main server. All the softwares that are to be used for the servers as well as web browsing clients should be free/open source software and should be readily upgradeable and should be easy to maintain. The proposed solution could be based on the several flavors of open source DL softwares like Greenstone, D-Space etc. The proposals/design ideas should reach any of the mail ids given below before 1 December 2004. You could also post any queries to: Dr. S. Venkadesan - venky@library.iisc.ernet.in Rtn Rajendra Rai - rai@bgl.vsnl.net.in Rtr Chinmay Albal - chinmayalbal@rediffmail.com Dr. S. Venkadesan Librarian JRD Tata Memorial Library Indian Institute of Science Bangalore-560012 INDIA Ph: +91 80 23601653 + 91 80 22932408 Fax: +91 80 23601653 E-Mail- venky@library.iisc.ernet.in venkys@gmail.com Contest to Design a Digital Library The Rotary Bangalore West along with the Rotaract Bangalore West is planning establish Rotary Scholastic Centre, a digital library for children at the Govt. Girls School in 13th Cross Malleswaram. The objective of the Project is to inculcate the spirit of learning and pursuit of knowledge by providing a learning centre for children upto the age group of 18 years and also to the Senior citizens above the age group of 60. It is our desire that we empower the children through the Power of knowledge, as we strongly believe that any investment in the development of children is a direct contribution to Nation building. In view of this, Rotary and Rotaract Bangalore West are holding a contest for students and freelancers to design a digital library. Ideas/Designs for the digital library are invited from interested parties. The team which proposes the best idea will implement the library and will also win a grand prize. The specifications for the library are given below. The main layout of the library will be on the Web based model with a main server + backup servers servicing upto 25 clients initially and should be scalable to serve upto 100 clients in the future. The server will have to run a webserver software hosting the pages where in the user at the clientside can run through an index of books sorted according to subjects and can access the book entirely or only parts of its contents based on topic/chapter. A data warehousing software will run in the background and will hold the books in a digitized format. The server side also should be capable of automatically generating index of items added to the Digital repository. Text based Digital documents could be made full text searchable through a suitable interface. When contents from CD are added to the library the server also need to act as CD cache. There is a need to have an intranet running for the local network and a firewall to prevent any intrusions and security threat. The network will be on a WLAN and we need to provide enough encryption on the packets that are sent out to prevent snooping on the network. There should also be an inbuilt mechanism which will keep track of all the books being accessed at any given time and it should be able to generate reports on issues such as no. of books accessed,total no. of hits on server, most frequently accessed books / subjects, internet access times, quantity of data downloads etc. For the internet access, mechanisms must be provided to allow only logged in users to access internet and to monitor the time and usage of the net. Suitable cache must be built into the system to speed up internet access to 'often used sites' On the server side we need automated replication on the backup servers such that there is no downtime experienced in case of failure on the main server. All the softwares that are to be used for the servers as well as web browsing clients should be free/open source software and should be readily upgradeable and should be easy to maintain. The proposed solution could be based on the several flavors of open source DL softwares like Greenstone, D-Space etc. The proposals/design ideas should reach any of the mail ids given below before 1 December 2004. You could also post any queries to: Dr. S. Venkadesan - mailto:venky@library.iisc.ernet.in venky@library.iisc.ernet.in Rtn Rajendra Rai - mailto:rai@bgl.vsnl.net.in rai@bgl.vsnl.net.in Rtr Chinmay Albal - mailto:chinmayalbal@rediffmail.com chinmayalbal@rediffmail.com Dr. S. Venkadesan Librarian JRD Tata Memorial Library Indian Institute of Science Bangalore-560012 INDIA Ph: +91 80 23601653 + 91 80 22932408 Fax: +91 80 23601653 E-Mail- mailto:venky@library.iisc.ernet.in venky@library.iisc.ernet.in mailto:venkys@gmail.com venkys@gmail.com