Louisiana State
University

School of Library and
Information Science

Cavan
McCarthy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

LIS 7410 Digital Libraries
course

GREENSTONE

Open
Source Software

Free
under GNU Public License

developed in New Zealand at the University of Waikato

Automatically creates organized collections of documents

with
standardized interface

permitting access via:

search
terms (automatic full text indexing)

list of
titles etc.

Handles
large collections

Documents can include

html
scanned from physical documents

web
pages

word
processing files, .pdf files etc.

works on
server or desktop

or
exports to CD-ROM

Multilingual

GREENSTONE USERS

New
Zealand Digital Library
http://www.nzdl.org/

(may
open in a local mirror site)

Note humanitarian and UN
collections

Note Chinese and Arabic collections

Examples of
Greenstone used for typical library / computing applications

Retrieval language: Boolean via some / all words popup
box; no
proximity, wildcards

SAMPLE
COLLECTIONS

Chopin Early
Editions
http://chopin.lib.uchicago.edu/

Books from the
Past
http://www.booksfromthepast.org/
A
well-presented bilingual site, dedicated to preserving out-of-print books in
Welsh or about Wales

Alive in Truth: The New
Orleans Disaster Oral History & Memory Project
http://nzdl.sadl.uleth.ca/cgi-bin/library?a=p&p=about&c=aliveint
"Alive
In Truth records life histories of people from New Orleans, Louisiana and nearby
areas who were affected by hurricane Katrina. Our mission is to document
individual lives, restore community bonds, and to uphold the voices, culture,
rights, and history of New Orleanians." Oral histories organized by a graduate
student team from the Information School at the University of Texas at Austin.
Alternative access via:
http://www.aliveintruth.org/

The Argus Digital Collection
http://europa.iwu.edu/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?c=argus8&p=about
The
Argus, Illinois Wesleyan University's student newspaper, has been published
under student supervision continuously since 1894. For most of that time, it has
been a weekly publication. This digital collection, managed with Greenstone
Digital Library Software, is part of an ongoing Argus preservation project
comprised of volumes
published from 1894-2000. We are concurrently creating
preservation microfilm copies, filmed from the original newspaper, and an
additional copy, derived from the scan, of each issue in its original size, on
acid-free paper.

Greater
Cincinnati Memory Project:
http://www.cincinnatimemory.org
A
collection of 6,000 pre-1940 photos, postcards and slides relating to landmarks
and events related to the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. Collection created by the Greater Cincinnati Library Consortium.
Alternative access:
http://memory.gclc-lib.org/

Mirabilia
Vicomercati
http://www.mirabiliavicomercati.org/index.html
In
Italy the historic city of Vimercate , a few miles north of Milan, maintains a
high-quality historical site. The local public library uses Greenstone to
maintain an archive of 6,500 photographs and 250 postcards: Archivi:
http://www.mirabiliavicomercati.org/sezioni/006/index.html

Southern Alberta
Digital Library
http://www.sadl.uleth.ca/gsdl/cgi-bin/library

City Library
of Slovensky Brod, Croatia
http://www.gksb.hr/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.exe?a=p&p=about&c=brod&l=hr&w=iso-8859-2
Old
postcards and historical outlines.

For
further examples, go to:
http://www.greenstone.org/examples
More
than 50 sample collections from all over the world.

Also
note:

Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) Libraries Digital
and Special Collections:
http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/dl/

Several of
these collections were produced using Greenstone; Greenstone collections have
"gsdl" in the URL; e.g.:

Finding Aids for WRLC Special
Collections:
http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/faids/faids.shtml

Treasure Chest of Fun
& Fact:
http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/treasure/treasure.shtml
A
Catholic comic book published in Ohio, and provided to Catholic parochial school
students between 1946 and 1972.

ACUA Photograph
Collection: Selected Images and Prints of The Catholic University of
America:
http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/cuphoto/cuphoto.shtml

GREENSTONE SOFTWARE

Greenstone Digital Library Software
http://www.greenstone.org/

Free
downloads:
http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-bin/library?e=p-en-home-utfZz-8&a=p&p=download

or via
SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=12123

53 MB
Windows download

(Unix
and Source code distributions available)

Collection building requires installation of Perl.

Web
server requires server software, e.g. Apache

Installer's guide (36 pages, .pdf)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/greenstone/Install.pdf

Simple
installation for Collection Building on Windows

Accept
defaults

Remember
password!

#

Greenstone 3:
http://www.greenstone.org/greenstone3-home
"Greenstone3
is a complete redesign and reimplementation of the original Greenstone digital
library software (Greenstone2). When complete, it will retain all the advantages
of Greenstone2 - for example, it will be multilingual, multiplatform, and highly
configurable. It incorporates all the features of the existing system, and is
backwards compatible: that is, it can build and run existing collections without
modification. Written in Java, it is structured as a network of independent
modules that communicate using XML: thus it runs in a distributed fashion and
can be spread across different servers as necessary. This modular design
increases the flexibility and extensibility of Greenstone. Please note,
Greenstone3 is our research version of Greenstone, and is still incomplete, and
not stable. For a production digital library we recommend using Greenstone2."
See also: http://sourceforge.net/projects/greenstone3

FURTHER DOCUMENTATION

User's
Guide (1.2Mb, .pdf, 87 p.)
http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/greenstone/User-en.pdf
General information on using Greenstone collections,
the
Collector web interface for building new collections,
and Greenstone's
administrative facilities.

From
Paper to Collection (294kb, .pdf, 44 p.)
http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/greenstone/Paper.pdf
Describes the entire process
of creating a digital library
collection from paper documents.
Including scanning, OCR process and
use of "Organizer"

Developer's Guide (1.4MB .pdf, 115 p)
http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/greenstone/Develop-en.pdf
Detailed description of Greenstone's collection building process

GreenstoneWiki: Documentation for Greenstone:
http://greenstone.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/GreenstoneWiki

E-mail messages
from the Greenstone mailing list archives:
http://puka.cs.waikato.ac.nz/cgi-bin/library?a=p&p=about&c=gsarch
Over
8,500 messages from the beginning of the mailing list in April 2000.

Greenstone
finalist of Stockholm Challenge Award. UNESCO. 06 Apr. 2006.
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=21725&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
"The
Open Source Greenstone Digital Library project has been retained as a finalist
in the education category of the Stockholm Challenge intended to award the best
ICT projects for social and economical development."

CREATING A COLLECTION (BRIEF OVERVIEW)

Enter
Greenstone

THE COLLECTOR

Create a
new collection    or
Work with an existing one, adding data to
it or deleting it

COLLECTION INFORMATION (for new collections)

title,
e-mail contact, description (all three required)

SOURCE DATA

NEW COLLECTION

may contain:

html
documents (.htm, .html),
plain text documents (.txt,
.text),
MS Word documents (.doc),
PDF documents (.pdf)
or
email documents (.email).

NOT .wbk (backups in
Microsoft Word)

EXISTING COLLECTION

Note
that first option in Existing collection
pop-up box will be
Greenstone
Select the collection you require

Files in
the new collection
must be exactly the same type
as those used
to build the existing one.

E.g.: if you want to use PDFs, have at least
one .pdf in the original collection!

ADDING DIFFERENT
DOCUMENTS
MAY WIPE OUT YOUR LIBRARY!
BE CAREFUL!

Documents can be:

on local
hard drive (you may need to update precise file locations;
e.g. D:\ may have
to be changed to D://);

at URL -
Greenstone will download all pages on site linked to /
subordinate to
opening page

or via
FTP.

Plan
your collection in advance;

At very
beginning load down examples
of all types of documents you wish to
use

Maintain your source collection for future reloading

DIFFICULT
TO DELETE INDIVIDUAL DOCUMENTS

Load
document once only:
load twice, two copies in collection

CONFIGURE COLLECTION
advanced users can
modify;
at first just accept defaults

BUILD COLLECTION
Takes time, depending on
size,
complexity of collection
Originals are copied and left in
place
.pdf files are processed into .html to permit indexing
May not be
able to read URLs via firewall

Check "Build summary" to verify that all
documents
have been successfully processed

VIEW COLLECTION
Note number of documents

DELETE COLLECTION
Collector / Open existing
collection /
Select collection / Delete collection

(DIFFICULT TO
DELETE INDIVIDUAL DOCUMENTS)

IMPORTANT
NOTE

Greenstone is
an excellent software but, like many other open-source solutions,
it can be
complex. If you intend to use it, give yourself plenty of time to get used to
working with it.

RESOURCES

Witten,
Ian H. and Bainbridge, David. How to Build a Digital Library.
New York: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers; 2002. 552 p. Greenstone software.
ZA 4080.W58 2003.
http://www.elsevierdirect.com/product.jsp?isbn=9781558607903

Witten, Ian H; Bainbridge, David, and Boddie, Stefan J.
Greenstone open-source digital library software. D-Lib
Magazine. 2001 Oct; 7(10)
http://www.dlib.org\dlib\october01\witten\10witten.html

Cavan McCarthy,
Ph.D.

Assistant Prof. SLIS /
LSU

All Rights
Reserved

Conditions
of use /
Disclaimer