An innovative approach to creating digital libraries and repositories in Armenia

Digitisation is accelerating in our contemporary world. Across the globe, various forms of information—such as books, photos, musical scores, archival documents, videos, and audio recordings—are being digitised every day. This process ensures that these documents are preserved and that they are available for viewing now and in the future.

In Armenia, the active process of digitisation started in the early 2000s. Some of the most active organisations in the field have been, and still are, the National Library of Armenia and the Fundamental Scientific Library (FSL) of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (NAS). In the last 20 years, these libraries have been prioritising the need to preserve the content in an organised manner, and subsequently, to present and display the digitised materials accordingly.

ASNET-AM, the Armenian NREN, could not ignore this new requirements and decided to address them. Thanks to the well-established collaboration with the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) within the framework of the EaPConnect project, ASNET-AM was able to get the exclusive rights to the dLibra systems developed by PSNC. This system allows the deployment of a digital library and/or the creation of a repository, characterised by a user friendly interface, offers a wide range of possibilities and combinations.

The first and most successful user case of dLibra in Armenia is the Pan-Armenian Digital Library which is technically maintained by a team from ASNET-AM with the umbrella support of colleagues from PSNC. The content of the library is currently being digitised and uploaded by FSL personnel. Since its launch in 2019, the Pan-Armenian Digital Library has been consistently replenished with digital objects such as articles, books, newspapers, voice recordings and so on. It also contains scientific journals by NAS and publications of some of its institutes, plus books and journals from the Viennese Mekhitarist Congregation’s collection and more. Currently more than 252,000 digital objects are available at arar.sci.am. The library’s usage statistics are growing exponentially. According to Simon Hunanyan from ASNET-AM’s, responsible for technical maintenance dLibra installations in Armenia, the number of visits in 2023 totalled 2,635,155!

Following the successful example of arar.sci.am, two more installations were carried out: the Armenian OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk  and Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory’s digital library.

What will the future bring? According to Aram Mirzoyan from ASNET-AM, responsible for the technical support of the dLibra rollout in Armenia, “The success story of the dLibra implementation has generated optimism about the future extension of its usage across the country further strengthening the cooperation between ASNET-AM and PSNC.”

This story was first published on the EaPConnect website. 

Image credit: Photo by Sylvia Yang on Unsplash