The present era of information explosion and technological advancement moving from the information age, knowledge society and wisdom implementation. Institutions of knowledge have many tasks to face, where the entire system of the library/information Centre is now gradually changing from manual operation to digital, automated knowledge or data bank. The objective of the paper was on features and advantages of free-source library/information Centre automation software, the criteria for selecting the right free-source library/information Centre automation software and limitations of the software. The study adopted literature review research. The use of free-source library/information Centre automation software will be a way forward to limit the cost of academic digital libraries and information Centre operations. Some of the free-source library/information Centre automation software discussed in this paper include: D-Space, Greenstone, E-Prints, OpenBiblio, KOHA, NewGenlib and PhpMyLibrary, thus, are for developing digital library institutional repositories or library/information Centre automation systems. The findings from the study were that open software has transformed the field of libraries and information Centre from manual to automated base and also information professionals need to learn the open software system and rights to avoid damage to the source code or loss of data which will help in facing the problem posed by commercial software. The study recommended the use of open-source software considering it potentially benefits cost reduction, gives customers more control over the system and increases open-source code development with significant advancement for effectiveness in the service delivery.
Dishon et al. (Mon,) studied this question.