Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL) Open Source Software to Build Digital Libraries

1. Greenstone Digital Library Software(GSDL)Open Source Software to Build Digital Libraries

2. What is open-source software? • “The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.” - from www.opensource.org • Anyone can redistribute the software, • Source code must always be available

3. What is a Library? A trinity BOOKS STAFF USERS

4. What is a Digital Library? • A digital library is an organized collection of information • A focused collection of digital objects • Methods for finding, access and retrieval • Methods for selection, organization, and maintenance of the collection • Methods for preservation

8. GSDL - Introduction Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

13. Features • Builds and distributes digital library collections • Full-text document search and display • Multi-platform support • Web-based user interface • Highly customizable • Document collections can be exported to CD-ROMs • Can be used for archiving

14. Access through Web browser Windows or Unix Searching Browsing Easy to maintain Various metadata Plug-ins for new document types Multiple languages Text, pictures, audio, video Open Source Software Hierarchical phrase and key-phrase indexes Multi-gigabyte Compression Password Protection User logs Administrative functions Updates dynamically without bringing system down Publish to CD-ROM Uniform presentation across different computers Features of Greenstone Software

15. Overview of Greenstone • Collections A typical digital library built with Greenstone will contain many collections, individually organized—though they bear a strong family resemblance. Easily maintained, collections can be augmented and rebuilt automatically.

16. Overview of Greenstone • Document Formats Source documents come in a variety of formats, and are converted into a standard XML form for indexing by “plugins.” Plugins distributed with Greenstone process plain text, HTML, WORD and PDF documents, and Usenet and E-mail messages.

17. Overview of Greenstone • Multimedia documents Collections can contain text, pictures, audio and video. Non-textual material is either linked into the textual documents or accompanied by textual descriptions (such as figure captions) to allow full-text searching and browsing.

18. Using Greenstone Collections Figure shows a screenshot of the “Demo” collection supplied with the Greenstone software. Almost all icons are clickable. Several icons appear at the top of almost every page. Figure

19. What we wanted • “Collections” of digital material • Individualized, depending on metadata etc • Up to several Gb of text … • … + associated images, movies, whatever • Fully searchable • Served on WWW, or published on removable media • Run anywhere, on any computer • Fully internationalized • Non-exclusive: documents and metadata in any format • Non-prescriptive: standard and non-standard metadata

20. UNESCO: DistributingGreenstone DL software Sustainable development “Give a man a fish, feed him for a dayTeach a man to fish, feed him for life” Greenstone software • GNU licensed • Fully documented … in English/French/Spanish/Russian • Language interfaces … Arabic Chinese Czech … Thai Turkish • Unix/Windows/Mac OS-X • Trivial to install • GUI interface for gathering, enriching, building … • Serve collections on Web or write them to CD-ROM • Document formats: HTML, Word, PDF, PS, plain text, e-mail • Metadata formats: XML, DC, OAI, MARC, … download from http://greenstone.org

21. Greenstone facts Distribution • Open source: Gnu GPL • Distributed via SourceForge since: Nov 2000 • Average downloads: 5000/month since then • Humanitarian CD-ROMs produced: 30-35 • Distribution for each one: 5000/year • Languages for interface: 38 • Languages for full software + manuals: 4 • Countries represented on email lists: 60 • UNESCO training courses in: Bangalore, Almaty, Dakar, Suva, … International • UNESCO, Paris (“Information for All” programme) • FAO, Rome (Info Management Resource Kit) • UNU, Japan (CD-ROM collections of UNU material) UN Agencies • University of Waikato, New Zealand • Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore • University College, London • University of Cape Town, South Africa • University of Lethbridge, Canada Technical centers

22. Sample collections at greenstone.org International Argentina Human Rights Commission Argentina Tasmania State Library Australia Peking University Digital Library China Gresham College, London England University of Applied Sciences, Stuttgart Germany Association of Indian Labour Historians, India Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode India Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore India Vimercate Public Library, Milan, Italy Italy Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services Netherlands Philippine Government Information Network Philippines Mari El Republic, Russia Russia Slavonski Brod Public Library, Slovenia Slovenia Vietnam National University Vietnam Welsh Books Council Wales

23. Sample collections at greenstone.org U.S. • Auburn University, Alabama • Detroit Public Library • Hawaiian Electronic Library • ibiblio project, University of North Carolina • Illinois Wesleyan University • LeHigh University, Pennsylvania • New York Botanical Garden • University of California at Riverside • University of Chicago Library • University of Illinois • Texas A&M University • Washington Research Library Consortium

24. Standards Metadata • Can use any metadata set, Dublin Core supplied • Plugins for • METS can be used as Greenstone’s internal representation XML Refer MARC OAI CDS/ISIS METS (subset) ProCite DSpace BibTex Serving • Web • Can publish Greenstone collections on CD-ROM • Can publish Greenstone collections on OAI • Export collections to METS • Export collections to DSpace (ready for DSpace’s batch import program) Documents • Plugins for PDF PostScript Word, RTF HTML Plain text Latex ZIP Excel PPT Email Source code Images(any format: GIF, JPEG, TIFF …) MP3 Ogg Vorbis UnknownPlug (e.g. for audio, MPEG, Midi)

25. The power of open source: Greenstone uses … • Ghostscript • Kea • pdftohtml • rtftohtml • TextCat • wvWare • Xlhtml • XML::Parser Interpreter for Adobe Postscript documents (Postscript plugin) Keyphrase extraction program (to generate metadata) Converter for PDF documents (PDF plugin) Converter for RTF documents (RTF plugin) Detects languages and document encodings Converter for Word documents (Word plugin) Converter for Excel/Powerpoint documents (plugins) Parses XML documents, used to read and write Greenstone’s internal XML document format

26. and … • MG • GDBM • wget • YAZ • Stemmer • GCC • CVS • Perl • Apache Creates compressed full-text indexes and performs searches Database used for metadata etc Downloading pages from the Web when creating collections Client and server implementation of Z39.50 English language stemmer C/C++ compiler Version control system Used for plugins etc Web server used by many Greenstone installations

27. Example Humanity Development Library for sustainable development and basic human needs • 160,000 pages • 30,000 images • 800 books • 430 magazines • 340 kg • US$20,000 • CD-ROM • US$1 • Win3.1x upward • Stand-alone • and intranet server • Web browser user interface Global Help Project, Antwerp (+ UN agencies)

28. PekingUniversity Library Chinese documents (pictures of text) + Chinese interface

29. Chinese (Chinese & English interfaces) Classic Chinese literature

30. French UNESCO, Paris

31. Spanish PAHO, WHO

32. Russian Mari El Republichttp://gov.mari.ru/gsdl

33. 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 huge collections as Greenstone can (particularly of metadata)

35. Create a new collection

36. Gather: Gather the files together

37. Enrich: Add the Metadata

38. Design: Add plugins and configure them

39. Design: Search Indexes, etc

40. Create: Building the collection

41. Preview: admire the result

42. Create: It’s built – preview it?

43. Format: For Features Display, etc.

44. Export the collection to CD-ROM?

45. Export the collection to CD-ROM?

46. Previewing the collection

47. Full-text search

48. Search Results

49. Full Text Display

50. Form-based search