Greenstone is open source digital library software that allows users to create and publish digital collections. It provides functionality for searching, browsing, and accessing collections. Greenstone collections can contain a variety of document types and metadata formats. The software is extensible through plugins and is multilingual and platform independent. The Greenstone Librarian Interface is used to build collections by gathering files, extracting metadata, and configuring browsing and search structures. Documentation and example collections are available on the Greenstone website.

1. Introducing the Greenstone
Digital Library
Software
Ian H. Witten
Computer Science Department
Waikato University
New Zealand
http://greenstone.org
http://nzdl.org
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Vittore Casarosa
ISTI-CNR
ISTI CNR

2. A conceptual view of DLs
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3. The three Entities
 Digital Library
– An organization, which might be virtual, that comprehensively collects,
manages, and preserves for the long term rich digital content, and
offers to its user communities specialized functionality on that content,
of measurable quality and according to codified policies
 Digital Library System
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– A software system that is based on a defined (possibly distributed)
architecture and provides all functionality required by a particular
Digital Library. Users interact with a Digital Library through the
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corresponding Digital Library System
 Digital Library Management System
– A generic software system that provides the appropriate software
infrastructure both (i) to produce and administer a Digital Library System
incorporating the suite of functionality considered foundational for Digital
Libraries and (ii) to integrate additional software offering more refined
refined,
specialized, or advanced functionality
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4. Different types of DLMS
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 Extensible Digital Library System
– A complete Digital Library System that is fully operational with respect to basic/
foundational functionality required. It is based on an open software architecture, so
that further software components can be incorporated on top of the ones already there
with ease (DelosDLMS, Greenstone)
 Digital Library System Warehouse
– A collection of software components that encapsulate the core suite of DL functionality
and a set of tools that can be used to combine these components in a variety of ways
(in Lego-like fashion) to create Digital Library Systems offering a tailored integration of
functionalities. New software components can easily be incorporated into the
Warehouse for subsequent combination with those already there (BRICKS,
DILIGENT)
 Digital Library System Generator
– A highly parameterized software system that encapsulates templates covering a broad
range of functionalities, including a defined core suite of DL functionality as well as
any advanced functionality that has been deemed appropriate to meet the needs of
the specific application domain Through an initialization session, the appropriate
parameters are set and configured; at the end of that session, an application is
automatically generated, and this constitutes the Digital Library System ready for
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installation and deployment (MARIAN)
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5. Greenstone main features
 Accessible via any Web browser
 Server runs on anything (all Windows + Unix + Mac)
Access  Collections can be published on CD-ROM/DVD
 Trivial to install
 GUI interface for building and publishing collections
 Collection-specific
Searching/  Full-text and fielded search
Full text
browsing  Flexible browsing facilities
 Metadata-based (Dublin Core recommended)
 Creates all access structures automatically
Extensible  Plugins — new document, metadata formats
 Classifiers — new metadata browsers
 Multilingual: Documents and interfaces
Multi-
Multi *  Multimedia: image, video, audio collections exist
image video
 Multiformat: Documents and metadata
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6. Supported Standards
Metadata  Can iusef any metadata set, Dublin Core supplied
 Pl
Plugins for XML Refer
MARC OAI
CDS/ISIS METS
ProCite DSpace
BibTex
 Web
 C publish G
Can bli h Greenstone collections on CD ROM
ll i CD-ROM
Serving  Can publish Greenstone collections on OAI
 Export collections to METS
 Export collections to DSpace (ready for DSpace’s batch import program)
Documents  Plugins for
ocu e s ug s o
PDF ZIP Images (GIF, JPEG, TIFF …)
PostScript Excel MP3
Word, RTF PPT Ogg Vorbis
HTML Email MediaWiki
Plain text Source code UnknownPlug
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(e.g. for audio, MPEG, Midi)

7. Supported Platforms
 Operating system:
– Windows (any version)
– Linux (any version)
– Unix (most versions, e.g. Solaris)
– Mac OS X
 Restrictions:
– No longer runs under Windows 3.1/3.11
– For Librarian interface (GLI), need Java—
which is no longer supported on Windows 95
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8. The Greenstone Librarian
Interface (GLI)
 Building collections
 Interactive Java program
 Runs on anything
 Build a collection on the computer you are on
 … plus new applet version
 Includes metadata editor
Caveat: cannot deal with such h
C t t d l ith h huge metadata collections as G
t d t ll ti Greenstone can
t
(Tutorial exercise: small collection of HTML files)
Invoke GLI: build a small collection of HTML files
Gather
Create
Look at extracted metadata
Set up shortcut in the Librarian interface

9. Create a new collection

10. Gather: Gather the
files together

11. Create: Build the
collection

12. Preview: admire
the result

13. Set up Building a
environment
variables collection
Details about Create a directory for the
Makecol collection (with
the collection
subdirectories),
subdirectories) put collect cfg
collect.cfg
Put source file in “etc” subdirectory
docs into a
subd ec o y
subdirectory
collect.cfg Convert to archive format
Import Extract metadata
(plugins)
Docs in
Greenstone
Archive format
Create indexing & browsing
collect.cfg Build
structures, compress …
Greenstone
collection
collect.cfg + macros
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(main.cfg)

14. Documentation
 The Greenstone system can be downloaded from the web site
(www.greenstone.org)
– available for Windows, Mac and Linux
– recommended version for Windows is 2 85
2.85
– recommended version for Mac and Linux is 2.83
 All (most) Greenstone documentation also available at the web site
 Best way to learn Digital Libraries and Greenstone is:
– Read the book from Ian Witten “How to build a Digital Library”, Morgan
Kaufmann, 2010, ISBN 978-0-12-374857-7 (Second edition)
, , ( )
– execute the recommended exercises (see the 4-days workshop on the
download page)
– study the demo collections (see Documented examples on the download
page)
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15. Example collections
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16. Example collections
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