CDSware (CERN Document Server Software)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe CDSware (CERN Document Server Software), a software developed at CERN. Design/methodology/approach – CDSware supports the creation of electronic preprint servers, Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs) and document systems on the web. It complies with the OAI-PMH (Open Archive Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) and uses MARC 21 as its underlying bibliographic standard. It is open source software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Findings – CDSware has been created for the handling of large repositories including various types of materials, like descriptions of museum objects, collections of confidential or public documents, etc. Practical implications – All technical details of the software are described to enable comparison with all other open source software for managing and bibliographic organization of digitized context. Originality/value – The paper presents a detailed description of highly (technically and bibliographically) developed software in order to help libraries in deciding which open source software is more suitable for their digitization project.