ABSTRACT
Technological progression and advancement in every field, from education to agriculture, smart-city to e-health, have imposed data security and privacy challenges. A digital library system is an amalgamation of data, users, technology, and resources. The security of data may be related to a user’s personal information, digital content, scholarly publications, copyright information, and so on. The upsurge of blockchain technology provides unencumbered accessibility to digitalized library contents to all authenticated users of the library system. In this chapter, a brief introduction to blockchain with an architectural overview, along with its mechanism, is demonstrated. An overview of the blockchain mechanism comprising consensus algorithms, Ethereum, and smart contract concepts is presented. The chapter also provides a detailed explanation of generalized blockchain applications and specialized applications in digital libraries. And finally, the chapter concludes with open challenges and future directions for further research.
