Comparing Open Source Digital Library Software

In the last years, a great number of digital library and digital repository systems have been developed by individual organizations, mostly universities, and given to the public as open-source software. The advantage of having many choices becomes a great headache when selecting a digital library (DL) system for a specific organization. To make the decision easier, five well-known and extensively used systems that are publicly available using an open source license are compared, namely DSpace, Fedora, Greenstone, Keystone, and EPrints. Each of them have been thoroughly studied based on basic characteristics and system features emphasizing multiple and heterogeneous digital collection support. Results are summarized in a score table. Cases for which each of these systems is considered as the most suitable are proposed.