Recent Trends in Databases and New Technologies for providing Online Library Services to create “Intelligent Libraries”

Abstract

Library services have gone through phenomenal changes in providing information services by adopting proven technologies for dissemination of information to the users. Due to the fundamental shift in accessing information, latest tools and technologies are developed for meeting the versatility of platform for sharing of information over Internet. Over past few decades, databases played major roles in storing and indexing information in a structured way. Relational databases became important software for storage and management of data in conventional libraries. Various commercial as well as open source database management software have been introduced for various purposes. These software are having structured architecture to query and retrieve information through standard SQL. The compulsion to handle voluminous and structures data such as audios and videos has given birth to unstructured query languages like NoSQL databases. Similarly for the user interfaces, simple HTML and CSS have been replaced with more sophisticated tools like JSP, JSON, XML, XHTML & HTML 5, J-Query, DOM, AJAX, HTML5, built-in Java/PHP framework, etc. Device and browser independent applications are in demand due to the penetration of smartphones, tablets and other hand-held wireless devices amongst masses. These kinds of latest devices are widely used by academic community and users also demand for the applications which can easily run on these devices. Android, Windows Phone, Palm WebOS, Blackberry etc. are commonly used by students and academic community who look for the library services to run on these devices. To reach services and applications to the all strata of the society, the services should be available in vernacular languages also. This paper discussed evolution of databases and library automation software, trends in technological changes in application development, innovation in providing services, semantic web, ontology, recent front-end tools for user interface design and strategies to be adopted to choose such trends and tools.