LibrApp: μία συνεργατική ψηφιακή βιβλιοθήκη βασισμένη στο Android

Ρόδιος, Μιχαήλ Κ.

Librapp: a collaborative digital library on the android platform

Master Thesis

Author

Ρόδιος, Μιχαήλ Κ.

Date

2015-02-02

Abstract

This MSc thesis aims to develop a digital library system, which is made available to users through an application for smart mobile devices. The application is oriented towards and written for the Android operating system, one of the most widely used systems. This system’s target is to increase the efficiency and the collaboration of a traditional library or an institution that provides library functions to its users / employees. This is achieved by offering services such as chat, interaction with other users, management systems etc. For the implementation of the platform we used modern technologies both at the application side, and at the side of the database that contains the material that manages the application. Apart from the Android API used for the design and implementation of the application we used JSon for the asynchronous communication with the remote server and PHP 5.0 for writing the web services that communicate with the base (MySQL). The application offers besides the main digital library services (search and store books), traditional collaboration services (connecting with friends, chat, create work in wiki) and a task management function. Finally, to investigate the usefulness of the application, a survey was conducted which examines how users benefit in terms of efficiency. The survey results were analyzed based on a mathematical model for evaluating efficiency and provided encouraging results for the further development of the application.