Afghanistan Digital Library Initiative: Revitalizing an Integrated Library System

Abstract

This paper describes an Afghanistan digital library initiative of building an integrated library system (ILS) for Afghanistan universities and colleges based on open-source software. As one of the goals of the Afghan eQuality Digital Libraries Alliance, the authors applied systems analysis approach, evaluated different open-source ILSs, and customized the selected software to accommodate users’ needs. Improvements include Arabic and Persian language support, user interface changes, call number label printing, and ISBN-13 support. To our knowledge, this ILS is the first at a large academic library running on open-source software.