Abstract:
Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) in Sri Lanka are increasing but most related
articles are published in local journals in English, Sinhala and Tamil languages in print mode.
Therefore researchers do not have an opportunity to be included in reputed indexing/abstracting
services and they do not have an opportunity to conduct comprehensive analysis of literature on
what has been conducted in their disciplines. As a result many HSS research may encount problems
of getting duplicated. Development of a database is proposed as the most suitable solution.
Accordingly, the objective of this study was to develop a database of all English, Sinhala and Tamil
journals and conference proceedings published in Sri Lanka. As the first step a model was
developed to construct a database. D-space open source software was used to develop the repository
for long-term storage, access and preservation of digital content. Consequently, a prototype was
developed. In the database subject headings under HSS considered as communities and the sub
divisions of main subject areas as sub communities. An item menu was created which contains
meta data. The metadata for the database were identified as bibliographic information such as
author name, authorship, title, citations, year, publisher details, journal name, volume, page
numbers or conference name place and pages numbers. The created database consists of different
authentication levels for uploading and online editorial process. The second phase of the study will
consider uploading of documents by providing key words and subject titles using standard subject
thesaurus.
