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Free Software in Buryat Electronic Cultural Atlas Project
Oleg Rinchikov
Academy of Sciences
Buryatia
This paper is devoted to the discussion of premises and experience of
free (open source) software utilization for deploying information system
which integrates the results of the projects on digitalization of cultural
heritage of Buryatia.
The Buryat ECA is considered as a platform of integration of informational
resources covering all the aspects of Buryat Culture. At present the Buryat
ECA (editor-in-chief - Dr. Tsymjit P. Vanchikova) is at the transition
stage from data collecting to data publishing through Internet.
Free software methodology meets the needs of the academic
community as independent, non-expensive, versatile tools of the information
management.
Free software advanced features are as follows:
- openness without necessity of license payments;
- cross-platformness which provides equal functionality to be available for a wide range of computer platforms and operational systems;
- scalability (this feature is closely connected with the previous one);
- considerable support from net community.
While experiencing free software approach in our work we met the following disadvantages:
- problem of compatibility with previously collected data. Data conversion demans a lot of efforts. It is often not an easy task in comparison with automated "wizards" of business software;
- lack of centralized information support.
The Buryat ECA project is based on the Apache web server, MySQL relational DBMS, and PHP programming language. We use Windows platform for producing data and Intranet services; resources are hosted under BSD UNIX at provider's server.
Applying the relational database model it is possible to obtain compliant structure of the BurECA which is aimed not only at presentation of geographical and historical objects, but also of different artifacts like manuscripts and xylographs, archive collections, paintings and so on.
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