Volume 7, Issue 11, November – 2022 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology

ISSN No:-2456-2165

Cloud Computing & its Application in Libraries

Amrita Kumari

Abstract:- Cloud computing is a new technique in the servers and desktops, collaborating with other campus
history of services which are offered in the internet. It has organizations and saving money and staff time” (Kelley,
completely changed the way of use of the power of 2012).Cloud based services provide a means of libraries to
computers irrespective of any geographic location. The free the resources on information technologies and focus on
biggest profit for organizations and businesses is that it libraries‟ core competencies- manage, organize and
offers services using hardware, software and platform of disseminate information. “Cloud based services brings
third party sources. It is very economical as it saves cost cutting-edge services to libraries that have less information
and maintenance. Cloud computing comes in several technology expertise,” according to Zhu (2012).Library
different forms. To minimize the cost and avoid professionals in most cases not being trained in maintaining
duplication of resources, infrastructure like software, the servers to find it difficult to undertake some of these
hardware and manpower are used . Emerging activities without the support of IT staff from within or
technologies like server virtualization and cloud outside the organization. Now cloud computing become a
computing in libraries are increased. In this paper, a new buzzword in the field of libraries, which is blessing to
schedule has been made to give an overview of how run different ICT services without much of a problem as
service, platform and infrastructure forms of cloud third-party services will manage the servers and undertake
computing has been used to serve the library needs. This upgrades and take backup of data. there are some technique
paper discusses about the characteristics, types, in using cloud services such as privacy, security, etc.. some
advantages and disadvantages, role of cloud librarian, use of the libraries have already embraced this new technology to
of technology and initiatives of cloud computing. This run some of their services. Most of the libraries are now
attempt has also been made to overview the areas in adapting 3M cloud libraries applications.
libraries where these technology can be deployed to
provide better library services and the productivity of II. WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING ?
library staff can be augmented or not.
Cloud computing is a new phenomena. Many
I. INTRODUCTION individuals and organizations are adopting this technology
model for IT services. The benefit is that they are saved from
Till recently, and now too many organizations and hosting and operating multiple servers over their own
individuals use computers to work alone, inside a business or network. It saves them from the burden and risk of constantly
home by investing on hardware, software and maintenance. It hardware failure. They need worry to install software,
is the day to adopt the latest technology in an organization. upgrading or backup issues.“The idea of cloud computing has
With the help of technology, it can ensure quick and emerged for outsourcing of computing infrastructure, storage
appropriate access of every information when need. There are of client data and applications that are accessed via a remote
so many forms of using this technology. For example the use server” (Hosch, 2009; Knorr and Grumman, 2008). In cloud
of software applications, storing data Etc. Accessing computing model, organizations need to buy or pay for only
computing power or platform to build applications is also the those services which are to be needed by the. In this pick and
example of such services. From e-mail, to word processing or choose model, organisations are just to request the service
photo sharing or video sharing there are so many services one providers to add or remove the services as per the need. To
can choose from. These services can be accessed from any define the concept, cloud computing can be defined as simply
type of internet connection and are secure. These services are sharing and use of applications and resources of a network
also backed up. The best live example of this is Gmail, which environment to get work done without concern about
is increasingly used by organizations and individuals to run ownership and management of the network's resources and
their e-mail services. Google Apps are being free for applications‟ (M.-S. E Scale, 2009)Cloud computing is a very
educational institutions and is widely used for running flexible model. In it, users can also build or prepare their own
different applications, especially the email services, which application which can also be used by others through internet.
was earlier run using their own computer servers. This has Actually it provides a common computing platform.
saved cost for the organizations as they pay per use for
applications and services and time for the computer staff,
which they can invest on running other services. Google takes
care of the upgrading, backup and maintenance of servers.
Libraries used computers for running services such as
Integrated Library Management Software (ILMS), website or
portal, digital library or institutional repository, etc. These
will be either maintained by parent organization's computer
staff or library staff. this investment on hardware, software,
and staff are doing to maintain these services and undertake
backup and upgrade as and when new version of the software
gets released. “Now many university libraries maintained

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Volume 7, Issue 11, November – 2022 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
III. CLOUD COMPUTING CHARACTERISTIC worrying about the complexity. It is based on subscription
model. Users only pay for what they use. The Users can focus
Mentioned below are the main characteristics of clouds on an innovation instead of complex infrastructure7.
computing:
 Resources are shared among users. It works very fast in C. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) :
the distributed computing environment. Infrastructure as a Service i.e. IaaS is also called as
 It ensures "on-demand" provision of resources, without Hardware as a Service or Haas. In this pay as you go service
having engineers for peak loads. model, the user is offered both storage and computing power
 By sharing common infrastructure, it ensures to work services. This includes virtual service space or a platform. It
efficiently with multiple users and multiple applications. also includes storage, network connections, IP addresses and
It reduces the cost of services. bandwidth. In this model, user doesn't buy separately
 It is the characteristic of Cloud computing that users can software, servers, network equipment or data-centre space;
access it from any corner of the world simply through the rather he buys all these as a fully outsourced service. The
internet connection because the infrastructure is provided price of the services is on computing basis, the user pay for
by a third-party. bundle of services chosen. The example can be taken from
 These applications are easy to maintain as compared to Amazon's web services. AWS provides Simple Storage
individual applications, since they are installed on a Services (S3) for data storage and elastic compute cloud
common platform and can be accessed from different (EC2) for computing resources. An Amazon's web services is
places. being used by organizations for many purposes viz. to run
high performance computing simulations, for content
IV. TYPES OF CLOUD COMPUTING delivery etc. It is also being used to host or backup the
organization's websites, to host their media collections and
There are three different types of services viz. SaaS, PaaS many other services.
and IaaS.
V. INITIATIVES OF CLOUD COMPUTING
A. Software as a Service (SaaS):
Software as a Service or SaaS is a service in which There are good number of cloud computing initiatives
software's or applications are provided to the users as a undertaken by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others
service. So we know it popularly as software on demand. The offering various types of cloud computing services for the
program can be accessed online via any suitable client such organizations, businesses, and individuals. Some services
as a web browser. In this model, users is provide the access offered by these initiatives are:
of the applications through licenses or subscriptions. The
A. Amazon Web Services (AWS):
software's are provided in a „pay as- you-go‟ model, where
Amazon is a major player of cloud computing. It offers a
the user has to pay only for the software's or applications
which she/he is going to use or at no charge. Example of such wide range of prominent services, for example, simple
services is Google Apps, Sales force, etc. It is hosted centrally storage service (S3), elastic compute cloud (EC2), simple DB
hosted and scope for customization or control of applications and simple queuing service (SQS). AWS provides a scalable
or software's is little. However, there are benefits like the user and reliable low-cost platform of infrastructure in the cloud
that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in countries
has no worry about hosting, installing, upgrading, or
maintaining the software or applications. In addition, the user around the world8. Some o solutions offered by Amazon
has low initial costs, and access to (usually 24/7) support through cloud computing include application hosting, web
hosting, backup and storage, enterprise IT, content delivery,
services.
and databases. To help new users, Amazon also offers a free
B. Platform as a Service (PaaS): service for a period of one year on all its cloud computing
Platform as a Service is a category of service which services to launch new applications, test existing applications
provides platform or environment to allow the developers to in the cloud, or simply gain a hands-on an experience with
build the required applications or software's and the users AWS.
have the access simply via a web browser over the internet.
B. Google Apps:
Software's are deployed and configuration settings are done
by users. All types of enterprises, irrespective of its size, are Google Apps cloud services, a multi-tenant, internet scale
infrastructure, offers faster access to innovation, superior
adopting this service as it is very hassle free, no worry about
the maintenance of hardware of software infrastructure. In reliability, and security, and maximum economies of scale as
this model, the enterprises is helped in building, testing and compared to on-premises, hosted and software plus services
deploying web based applications. The organizations need technologies9. Google Apps is available free for individuals
not to invest for the infrastructure they require for building and organizations (limited up to 10 user accounts),
web and mobile applications. They have to use of platforms educational institutions and US non-profitable organizations
and for a price to businesses and organizations. now a days
of vendors such as Windows Azure, Google AppEngine, and
Google apps offer Gmail which is most preferred email
Force.com. However, there is a disadvantage that the
applications or software's which are built using these vendor's service. It also provides Google Docs, Google Sites, Google
services, are usually locked into that one platform6. This video and other services. Google Apps helps organizations to
service is like water and electricity facility, where the users move their e-mail services, web services and office
have to simply „tap in‟ and take what they need without applications. Google also has „Google App Engine‟ service.
With this service, organizations can build and host web apps

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Volume 7, Issue 11, November – 2022 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
on the same systems that power Google applications. It offers environment later. Its website claims that over 5300 in more
fast development and deployment; simple administration, than 80 countries are deploying Ex-Libris solutions for
with no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups; automation of their library resources. It allows libraries to
and effortless scalability9. enhance their efficiency and lower the cost of operations and
extend their value through launching new services. It has
C. Microsoft Windows Azure : changed the way to provide traditional management of library
Microsoft Corporation has created its own cloud platform resources through its library based system, Alma. It besides
on 1st February 2010 which was named as Windows Azure ensuring considerable savings in total cost, involved in the
before 25 March 2014. After this it is renamed as Microsoft implementation of software and the use of a centralized cloud
Azure. Microsoft provides this service through its service enables libraries to easily influence the collaborative
datacenters. In this platform, organizations can develop and efforts of the library community to provide effective services
run applications itself with unbounded scalability. User has to for their users14. To provide worldwide cloud-based services;
pay only for the services he chooses. Windows Azure allows it has opened data centres at various locations. The company
developers to develop and run applications quickly, while promises to adhere to data security, updates, and standards in
leveraging current skills to develop applications with .NET, implementing cloud services to safeguard the interests of
PHP, or Java10. Some of the scenarios offered by Windows customers.
Azure for businesses and organizations include SaaS, storage,
computing, database management etc. C. Dura space's Dura Cloud :
Dura space provides open source repository solutions by
D. Rackspace Cloud : undertaking turnkey projects for organizations and libraries
This cloud platform offers three types of services for to enable them to share scholarly literature using DSpace and
organizations and businesses viz. cloud servers, cloud files Fedora Commons. It is particularly devoted to improve and
and load balancers. It offers free architecture assistance to its sustain Fedora and DSpace. These open source repository
users with every account. Cloud servers are available to solutions are very famous for IR solutions. Its new service
organizations in different sizes . It uses Akamai's content Dura Cloud provides digital preservation support services in
delivery network (CDN) to globally deliver the stored media the cloud, which is cost effective and simple for libraries.
and files. Its third service Cloud balancer helps organizations Dura Cloud helps libraries to move content to the cloud and
to enhance their server capacities and to balance the load store it with different service providers to eliminate the risk
factor and this service is extended only on-demand11. of data loss. The cloud solutions offered include online
backup, preservation and archives, media access, online
VI. CLOUD COMPUTING: APPLICATION IN sharing, and cloud broker
LIBRARIES
D. OSS Labs:
There are some organizations and business houses who OSS labs from India is using Amazon's elastic cloud
functions as cloud computing vendors for library software's, computing platform owing to the various capabilities of
search engines and digital libraries etc. and offer the use of Amazon such as high durability of data, ISO standards based
cloud computing platform for these purposes. Some of these strong information security and flexibility. It is expected that
are: the OSS labs will be able to provide robust open based
A. OCLC’s Web scale : solutions to demanding customers. OSS Labs offer hosting
OCLC is perfectly using cloud computing for libraries and and maintenance services for Koha ILS and DSpace IR. OSS
set an example for others. Years together OCLC has been Labs use Amazon's cloud services. Library operations have
functioning as a cloud computing vendor because they become very cost effective and the library staff need not to
provide cataloguing tools over the internet and allow member worry about maintenance of software.
institutions to draw on their centralized data store13. OCLC VII. ENHANCEMENT OF LIBRARY SYSTEM BY
has implemented the plan of library management systems i.e. USING THE CLOUD COMPUTING
world share management services (WMS). This service has
services for many areas like acquisitions, analytics, resource  Information Common: Information are common like
sharing, cataloguing and license management components. It bibliographical data, content pages, cover pages, question
offers the entire library collection management in a cloud- papers, syllabus, and other reading material we can share
based application. The main purposes of web scale are that on one platform. It helps in improving the economy of
libraries can share their resources, data, and innovation with library and avoids duplication of library purchase.
ease. To serve these purposes, it has some certain features that  Collection Development: Cloud computing is used for
work together to provide its users better library services. In collection of development. A Duplications can be easily
other words, this will generate cost benefits for libraries and avoided and an alternate resources can be located and
efficiencies not possible when utilizing disparate, specialized made accessible to patrons.
systems13. The service promises to include privacy, security,  File sharing: To share various files in electronic form
scalability and technical support. become very easy with the cloud computing.
B. Ex-Libris Cloud:
 Information Discovery: Cloud provides a platform to
It is a leading library software vendor from USA. It
store all the information that one can access anytime from
provides cloud based solutions to automate the library
anywhere. so information discovery and searching
operations. It developed most products for locally become too easy and it is very useful for researchers.
implemented solutions and adapted them to a hosted

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Volume 7, Issue 11, November – 2022 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
 E-Learning: In the E-Learning environment , cloud  Document Download Service: One can download the
computing is boon. A Study material which can be kept documents easily if permit access in the network.
on the cloud for reference purpose and online  Digital preservation/Scanning Service: Digitization and
examinations also can be conducted. Discussions, scanning work is to be done centralized and so one can
revisions is to be done at a time from different places. avoid duplication of such time consuming work. Libraries
 Information Literacy/Orientation: Libraries can can preserve the collection is in the digital form in the
conduct an information on literacy and orientation courses form of archives.
on the cloud. They keep the tutorials, videos,  Article Delivery Service: Cloud computing is to be used
presentations and files on the cloud for user's orientation. for article delivery service to the patrons by the libraries.
 Social Interactions with the users: It Can be possible The Publishers are already using this technology for
because of cloud computing. providing access to libraries.
 E-books Lending Service: A Cloud platform is now  Current Awareness Service: To provide current
becoming popular to lend the E-Books. awareness service to all patrons it has become very easy
 Union /Shared Catalogue/OPAC: Network libraries can with cloud computing.
use same platform and give an access to their collection  Document Sharing: Document sharing has become very
on one platform. From this cloud computing creation of easy with cloud computing.
union catalogue becomes very easy.  Bulletin board service: We can provide a new services
on the bulletin board with this technology.

Fig. 1: The model for Cloud University Library.

VIII. ROLE OF CLOUD LIBRARIAN  To provide interlibrary loan facility To track usage record
of cloud resources.
 To track member information and transactions .  To develop digital collection To keep record of physical
 To provide an Access Pin to students and define validity(Pin resources too for providing referral service.
can be auto generated Validity can be set in the software).  To deal with the Cloud resource and players and select the
 To communicate with the member libraries and best bargain.
contributing their resources to cloud for resource sharing .  To maintain their own virtual profile by creating his or her
 To communicate with the EBooks, Journals publishers& the blog or social network profile to interact with the user and
distributors, consortia, database providers . the same platform can be used for providing.
 To discuss with the faculty members and the subject
experts, librarians for preparing different packages for A. Advantages :
different faculties and classes.  Cost saving – In cloud computing, the user has to pay
 To update technological skills. only for those services which he chooses and thus
 To give a technological support to member libraries. technology enables the libraries or organizations to save
 To conduct a training and awareness programs for readers. on costs.

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Volume 7, Issue 11, November – 2022 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
 Easy on installation and maintenance – By using this cloud computing providers may increase the cost of
technology, the organization has no worry about server their services in the future and organizations may end up
updates and other computing issues. IT staff of the paying higher charges.
organizations may concentrate on their other tasks and  Knowledge and integration – This one is very
there is no need to procure any hardware to run the important requirement that the organizations have their
servers. own IT staff who have knowledge of cloud computing.
 Increased storage - Cloud can hold more storage than Otherwise it is dependent on the service provider.
a personal computer or the servers available in the Likewise, it is difficult to integrate equipment used in
libraries or organizations and it is possible to extend as data centres are different from that of peripheral
per the need. equipment's in the organization such as printers, USB
 Automation – With the help of cloud computing drives, etc. So it is difficult to integrate and the
technology, every software update or maintenance is integration is also an issue.
done automatically by the service provider and the IT or
library staff need not to worry about all these things. IX. CONCLUSION
 Flexible – This technology is very flexible and the user Cloud computing is a new way in the computer systems
is free to add or remove any of its facilities thus saving technology. It is emerged due to the developments in internet
cost and time of the users. It facilitates the libraries to and associated technologies. This phenomenon is in
expand its services anytime. developing stage and will be very helpful for the
 Better mobility - The users rather than having to remain organizations, if the services are being used with care.
present at their desks with a PC and Internet connection However, this technique is very helpful for organizations like
can access the library servers from wherever they are,. libraries in automating and managing their services. This
 Shared resources – This is the main and important technology has certain advantages. With the help of this
feature of cloud computing that participating technology, library staff will be free from managing the
organizations can share their resources. By sharing their servers.
resources, they can save on costs and more libraries can
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ISSN No:-2456-2165
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