Open Source Software brings a new lease of life to libraries in Palestine

A few old computers, some freely available Open Source Software (OSS) and a little knowledge was all that it took to create a high-speed network that pleased staff and astonished students at Yusuf Ahmed Al-Ghanim Library, the Main Library at Birzeit University in Palestine’s West Bank.

On returning home from a workshop on Open Source Software for libraries during the eIFL.net General Assembly in Vilnius in October 2005, Library Director Diana Sayej-Naser was inspired to approach the university’s electrical engineering department who were running a project on OSS. Within a couple of months, the library had transformed their old computers into a new high-speed network with access to the Internet, online databases, the library catalogue and Ritaj, the university’s academic web portal.

“The library terminals are always in high demand, so the students were delighted to have ten more computers available. At first it was hard to convince them to work with Pentium 1 and 2 computers which date back to 1993, because they expected them to be slow and unworkable”, said Diana Sayej-Naser. However, the reaction of Nizar Khalil was typical, “I found no difference between this Pentium 2 and the Pentium 4 computer located in the main hall of the library. The speed is great! What have you done with them to become that fast?”, said the fourth year arts student.

The answer is simple according to Dr. Wasel Ghanem, head of the Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering department, “We switched to Open Source Software. All the computers run Linux and the memory was upgraded. One Pentium 4 acts as a server to the ten older computers which operate as thin clients. Now they perform just as well as the new computers running proprietary software”.

Dr. Ghanem believes that OSS offers great potential especially for developing countries. “Up until now, ICT in Palestine has largely focused on proprietary solutions, mainly Microsoft. The typical lifetime of a PC computer network in a school is three years, after which new versions of operating systems and applications become necessary. This is expensive and has hampered large scale deployment of computer infrastructure in Palestine. OSS can provide significant cost savings, especially in the education sector. Hardware costs can be reduced by as much as 65% and licensing fees are eliminated”.

But for Dr. Ghanem it is not just about cost, it is also about quality. “OSS is flexible and sometimes superior to propriety solutions. Most importantly, it stimulates local innovation and transfer of knowledge by providing Palestinian software developers with the opportunity to contribute to the global OSS community, as well as OSS systems and applications”.

Birzeit University

Birzeit University, situated just outside the town of Bir Zeit near Ramallah, was the first Arab university to be established in Palestine and is widely considered the foremost third-level educational establishment in the Palestinian territories. The OSS project at Birzeit University focuses on the ICT infrastructure required to support large scale deployment and applications of technology in education. It uses Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), an add-on package for Linux that allows lots of low-powered thin client terminals to connect to a Linux server. As well as the Main Library at the university, the system has been tested in Abu-Shkkaidem and Al-Saweyya schools and is now being implemented in Al-Bierheh, Al-Hashemeyya and Al-Ameer, the three biggest secondary schools in Ramallah.

eIFL.net and Open Source Software

eIFL.net supports alternative models for libraries in transition and developing countries. Proprietary library software applications are often purchased through one-time donor grants. This means that eIFL.net libraries sometimes cannot afford licence and maintenance fees and the systems become obsolete. eIFL.net provides advice on software solutions that are sustainable for libraries in transition and developing countries, that enable eIFL.net members to create their own digital libraries and that ensure that their resources are visible in a networked world.

August 2006