Greenstone Digital Library Software is an open source software suite for building and distributing digital library collections. It was developed by the New Zealand Digital Library Project and is distributed in cooperation with UNESCO. Greenstone allows for the creation of collections from a variety of material, provides tools for searching and browsing collections, and supports publishing collections on the web or CD-ROM. It has been widely adopted internationally since its initial release in 2000.

1. Greenstone Digital Library Software:
An Overview
Imran Mansuri
Project Assistant (Library Science)
INFLIBNET Centre
7 March 2011 Prepared by Imran Mansuri 1

2. Agenda
• Introduction : Digital Library Software (DL)
• Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL)
• Introduction
• History
• Versions
• Features
• Unique Features
• Technology used
• Example Sites
• Example Collections
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3. Digital Library Software
• The term “Digital Library” refers to a library in
which collections are stored in digital formats
(as opposed to print, microform, or other
media) and accessible by computers
• The digital content may be stored locally or
accessed remotely via computer networks
• Access the books, images are in digital format
• Using Net access to information from
anywhere
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4. Digital Libraries : Features
 Dynamic Electronic Information Systems
 Increase Portability
 Efficiency of Access
 Flexibility
 Availability
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5. Digital Library Software
 Dspace
 Fedora
 Eprints
 Resource Space
 Greenstone
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6. Greenstone Digital Library Software
• The Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL)
provides a way of building and distributing digital
library collections, opening up new possibilities
for organizing information and making it available
over the Internet or on CD-ROM
• Developed by the New Zealand Digital Library
Project (www.nzdl.org) at the University of
Waikato
• Distributed in co-operation with UNESCO and
Humanities Library Project, Romania
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7. GSDL : Some Facts
• Current version:
 2.82 and 3.03
 Available from http://www.greenstone.org
• Software suite for building, maintaining, and
distributing digital library collections
• Comprehensive, open-source
• Distribution and promotion partners:
o UNESCO
o Human Info NGO, Belgium
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8. GSDL : History
 1995 - Digital library of Computer Science
Technical Reports. Its established by New Zealand
Digital Library
 1997 - Decision to use the GPL (General Public
License ); name : Greenstone adopted ; Work
with Human Info NGO to produce humanitarian
CD-ROMs
 1998 Apr - First CD-ROM collection released:
Humanity Development Library
 1998 Aug - Greenstone.org website established
 1999 BBC - Collection established
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9.  2000 Apr - Greenstone mailing list started
 Aug - Formally established cooperative effort with
UNESCO and Human Info NGO
 Nov - Distribute software on SourceForge
 2002 Apr - Development of Greenstone3
 Mar - Official opening of the Niupepa collection,
development of the Greenstone Librarian
Interface
 Jun - First UNESCO Greenstone CD-ROM
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10. 2003 - A Java development that became
known as the Greenstone Librarian Interface
2005 Nov - Initial release of Greenstone3
2006 Apr - Greenstone Support Group for
South Asia launched
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11. GSDL : Version
 2000 Feb - gsdl 2.12
 Apr - gsdl 2.21
 Dec - gsdl 2.30
 2001 Feb – gsdl 2.31
 2002 Jan – gsdl 2.38
 2003 Jun - gsdl 2.40
 2004 Feb – gsdl 2.50
 2005 Apr – gsdl 2.60 and in November - gsdl 3.00
 2006 Mar – gsdl 2.70
 2007 Apr – gsdl 2.80
 2008 gsdl 3.03
 Current release gsdl 2.82
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12. GSDL : Features
 Multi S/W Platform
 Multi Lingual Support
 Structured Metadata in XML using DC
 Metadata Extraction
 Plug-ins for Documents
 Full-text mirroring
 Text Level Penetration
 Concurrent & Dynamic Content Development
 Uniform Presentation
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13. Collection Building
• Web and command line mode
• Input collections:
• GSDL server (files)
• Remote (FTP - files, HTTP – website pages)
• Collection input: batch mode, NOT interactive
• Document formats: HTML, PDF, Text, Word
• (Doc, RTF), PS, e-mail, bibliographic
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14. • Support for full text tagging for hierarchical
document browsing
• Automatic text extraction and indexing
‘Plugins’ for different document formats
(HTMLPlug, PDFPlug, etc.) May fail for some
documents!
XML representation – conversion to HTML for
Display
Native document format – storage and display (via
browser plugins, helper applications)
• Data compression support
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15. • Metadata
Automatic extraction of simple metadata
(e.g. Title, date)
Explicit metadata via ‘Classifiers’
Hierarchical (e.g. Subject)
List (e.g. Organization, Author)
Used for browsing and field-based searching
Multi-language support via Unicode
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16. Collection Browse and Search
• Full text search
• Metadata (field) search and browse
• Boolean
• Ranked
• Multi-language support for browse/
search interface
• Search history, search term
• highlighting…
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17. Collection Presentation
• Search results formatting
Format strings in the configuration file
• Home page customization
Using macros
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18. GSDL : Features
 Easy Installation
 Easy Maintenance
 Hierarchy Structure
 Interface Customization
– Front Page Design, Header for the Digital
Library, Collection Icon, Cover Images
 Collection Configuration (Collect.cfg) File
 Scalability, Flexibility
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19. Collection Distribution
• Web
• CD-ROM
 Publish created collections to the CD-ROM
 Windows only
 Two possibilities:
o Install GSDL software to HDD and access
content on CD
o Run GSDL search engine out of the CD!
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20. GSDL : Unique Features
 Incremental Collection Building
 Content Development in 3 different ways
 Good Documentation and Active Mailing
List
 Variety of Plug-ins for different document
Types
 Publishing on CD-ROMs
 Data Compression
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21. GSDL : Technology Used
• Technology used in the current version
– Java 1.6 (Higher)
– Image Magic
– Application Server : Apache 2.2
– GSDL_Linux 2.82 and Win
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22. GSDL : Example Sites
India: Archives of Indian Labour
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23. United States: New York Botanical Garden
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24. International: Global Library Services Network
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28. Some Observations
Strengths:
 Configurability: content extraction for indexing,
presentation layout, metadata for browsing and field-
based searching (little difficult though!)
 Extensibility:
Plugins for content extraction, Unicode for
multilanguage support, source code availability
 Fulltext search on variety of document formats
 XML, Unicode, Dublin Core support
 Data compression
 CD-ROM publishing
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29. Limitations:
 Interactive content updating and management
not possible
 No duplicate identification
 Metadata handling appears to be little complex
 Linux version seems to be more robust than
Windows
 Hangs while processing some documents during
collection building – no way to gracefully handle
this
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30. Current Status
 Strong development work – CS department
at University of Waikato, NZ
 Z39.50 experimental interface now available
 Promoted by UNESCO
 Beginning to be used worldwide Can be
expected to reach CDS/ISIS like popularity
(particularly in developing countries)
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31. Documentation and Help
• Available at: http://www.greenstone.org
 – Software
 – Demo collections
 – FAQ
 – Tutorial materials
• Documentation:
 Installer’s Guide, User’s Guide, Developer’sGuide,
and other reading materials
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32. • Mailing lists:
– Greenstone Users List
– Greenstone Developers List
• Greenstone Documentation Wiki
http://wiki.greenstone.org/wiki/index.php/Gr
eenstoneWiki
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