Information Management Resource Kit

Module on Digitization
and Digital Libraries

UNIT 6. EXAMPLE OF DIGITAL LIBRARY

SOFTWARE: GREENSTONE

LESSON 1. GREENSTONE TUTORIAL

NOTE

Please note that this PDF version does not have the interactive features
offered through the IMARK courseware such as exercises with feedback,
pop-ups, animations etc.

We recommend that you take the lesson using the interactive courseware
environment, and use the PDF version for printing the lesson and to use as a
reference after you have completed the course.

© FAO and UNESCO, 2005

6. Example of Digital Library Software: Greenstone - 1. Greenstone tutorial - page 1

Learning Objectives

At the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• recognize the key features of Greenstone

digital library software;

• identify the installation requirements and

options;

• identify which interface features can be

provided to end users, and

• identify the three different collection building

approaches provided by Greenstone.

Introduction

A very important aspect of the creation, A colleague from another department has talked to
organization and provision of access to me about Greenstone, an open source suite of
digital library collections is the software software for building digital library collections.
used for this purpose. Can you please collect some information about it?

Though it is possible today to create simple

digital library collections using prevailing
Web and database technologies, it would
take a lot more effort to develop software
that integrates functions such as metadata,
full text search and retrieval, support for
multiple document types and formats,
multilingual content and access
management.

Affordable software is thus a key

requirement for the successful This team is in charge of developing the digital library
development and deployment of digital for their organization.
libraries.

6. Example of Digital Library Software: Greenstone - 1. Greenstone tutorial - page 2

 Greenstone overview

Greenstone is a freely available 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.

Greenstone is open-source software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

The aim of the software is to empower users, particularly in universities, libraries and other public service
institutions, to build their own digital libraries.

Greenstone overview

We should focus more closely on Greenstone’s

key features. Are they consistent with the
project we have in mind?
Digital library developers can benefit from the
variety of features supported by Greenstone, such
as multiplatform availability, the capability to
provide access in different ways and manage
different file formats, media and languages.

Greenstone allows powerful indexing, search and

browse methods.

Developers can also choose among various

interfaces to build collections and customize the
end-user interface.

Let’s have a look at these features in a more

detailed way…

6. Example of Digital Library Software: Greenstone - 1. Greenstone tutorial - page 3

 Greenstone overview

The following are the features supported by Greenstone:

Multiplatform availability

Greenstone is available for various operating system platforms, including Windows (any version),
Linux, Sun Solaris, and Mac OSX.
It is available in both binary (executable) and source code form for the Windows (all versions), Linux,
and Mac OS X operating systems and in source code form for other operating systems (Unix).

Access and Distribution

A Greenstone Collection can be served on the World Wide Web or it can be exported to a CD-ROM
and accessed from the CD-ROM or local hard disc without the need for Internet connectivity.

Collection building
Supports a variety of interfaces for collection building.

Greenstone overview

The following are the features supported by Greenstone:

Powerful Indexing
Greenstone can build indexes from full text documents and also metadata associated with
these documents. It supports creation of indexes for various metadata fields, either automatically
extracted or manually assigned.

Powerful Search and Browse

Since Greenstone does full text and field based indexing, you are provided with a variety of search
options.

File formats
Greenstone supports different file formats, such as HTML, PDF, DOC, RTF, E-mail, Plain text, PPT
etc. These file formats are converted into a standard XML-based internal format for indexing using
‘plugins’.

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 Greenstone overview

The following are the features supported by Greenstone:

Extensibility and Configurability

New plugins can be developed for file formats not supported by Greenstone. Greenstone allows
you to configure a collection to customize the interface, indexing, browsing and presentation
features according to your requirements.

Multimedia and Multilingual support

Greenstone lets you build collections of non-textual multimedia documents such as audio, video,
and pictures accompanied by textual description or metadata to allow searching and browsing.
Unicode, an encoding standard for representing a large number of language scripts, is used
throughout Greenstone. This facilitates building, searching and browsing documents in any
Unicode-compliant language.

Greenstone overview

In order to have a more precise idea of what type of collections can be built with Greenstone, the team
examines some of the various digital library collections that have been developed using
Greenstone. Such collections have been developed around the world, in several languages and in various
domains, including historical, educational, cultural, and research.

Peking Chopin Maori

University Early Niupepa
digital Editions Collection
library (USA) (New
(China) Zealand)

New Zealand
Mari El Digital Library
Archives
Republic of Indian LeHigh
government Labour University
information (India) Library
(Russia)

Click on each collection for more information

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 Greenstone overview

Here are some features the team has found about digital library collections built using Greenstone:

They predominantly consist Greenstone collections may

of textual objects (called also consist of audio,
‘documents’), in various photographic pictures,
forms: structured and video and other digital
unstructured text objects.
documents, page images,
and text documents with
accompanying images… Each collection provides a
They may comprise a very uniform interface
large number of documents. through which all
documents in it can be
accessed.
Metadata are
automatically extracted
from document objects A Greenstone digital library may include
and/or assigned explicitly many different collections, each
during collection building. organized differently, although there is a
strong family resemblance in how
collections are presented.

Greenstone overview

A variety of collections can be built Can you help the team to list the features supported
using Greenstone! This is clear from by Greenstone?
the features we have identified. I
think we should summarize them in a
short report...

List the features in the text box.

Then, click on View answer to see the complete list.

View
Viewanswer
answer

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Greenstone installation

This software seems to be appropriate to

our needs! How can we obtain it? And what
do we need to install it?
The latest version of Greenstone software can
be downloaded freely from
http://www.greenstone.org, together with
extensive documentation on how to use it.
The software and the documentation are also
included on this CD-ROM: you can find them in
the Resources section.

Greenstone’s installation is guided, but you may want to have more detailed instructions.

Where can I find step-by-step instructions for installing Greenstone?

Detailed information and step-by-step instructions for installing Greenstone on Windows and Linux
are available in the Greenstone Digital Library Installer’s Guide (2.50). You can find these
documents in the Greenstone Digital Library Documentation section (Resources-software&tools-
Greenstone).

Greenstone installation

Before installing the software, be sure you have all the hardware and software requirements!

Hardware and Software Requirements

Storage requirements:

50MB for a binary installation

155MB for compiling Greenstone from source code
200MB for optional Greenstone demonstration collections
5MB for documentation
24MB for Greenstone’s “CD exporting” function

Software:

Java Run-time Environment (JRE) version 1.4 or above (Install JRE before installing GSDL) –
JRE is required for GLI
[Not required for default Windows installation] Web Server (Apache Recommended)
PERL - gets installed automatically
C++ compiler, if you wish to compile the source code (Visual Studio or GCC)
A Web Browser (Internet Explorer 4 and above or Netscape 4.5 and above)

Now let’s focus on a few critical points concerning the installation…

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 Greenstone installation

When you install Greenstone, you are asked to select one from the four available types of setup:

The Local Library version is the default

Custom setup setup type. It has a web server built-in
allows you to and is suitable for building and viewing
install any or all Greenstone collections on a stand-alone
of the features system. It has limited web serving abilities.
provided by the It is available for Windows platform only.
other three setup
types. It also Source code installs source code only
allows you to [binary executables will not be installed].
install additional You need to compile the source code
features not before it can be used. This installation
included in the does NOT compile Greenstone for you.
other three-setup
types. Web Library setup is recommended for those wanting to serve
Greenstone collections on the web. It requires a separate web
server [e.g. Apache].

Greenstone installation

Some suggestions for choosing your setup

For Windows and Linux, installing from binaries (not source code) is recommended, unless if you
want to work at source code level which requires compilation.
Note that collection building is not supported in Windows 3.x.
Since Linux is the primary operating system under which Greenstone has been developed, it is more
robust and efficient on this platform. You may like to opt for Linux platform if you have the required
support for installation and maintenance.

For Windows, if you do not feel comfortable configuring a suitable web server (e.g. Apache or Internet
Information Server), we recommend that you use the Local Library setup (this setup is not available
in other platforms). This setup is easy to install and comes with an inbuilt web server. We would
recommend it over the Web library unless:
a) you expect a large number of simultaneous users, or
b) you are already using a web server to serve other stuff, or
c) you need to offer 24/7 service that will automatically start after rebooting etc.
To serve large number of simultaneous users and provide 24/7 services on the Internet, you should
opt for Web Library setup (all platforms).

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 Greenstone installation

During installation, a demonstration Greenstone collection (‘Greenstone demo’) is automatically

installed.

The Greenstone CD-ROM also comes

with several additional pre-built
example collections,
demonstrating the capability of
Greenstone to build a variety of
collections with different types of
source documents and collection
configuration features.

These example collections (except

the Development Library Subset DLS
collection which is quite large) are
installed automatically under
Local Library and Web Library setup
options. You can also selectively
install these pre-built collections by
opting for ‘custom’ setup (during
These collections provide an excellent learning installation).
opportunity to explore Greenstone capabilities.

Greenstone installation

A key feature supported by Greenstone is

exporting digital library collections to
CD-ROM. The exported collection can be
accessed directly from the CD-ROM without
requiring any installation or can be installed
on the hard disc.

This feature, however, is available for

Windows platform only.

Utilization of this functionality requires the

CD-ROM export module. This module is
automatically installed when you install
Greenstone (‘Export CD-ROM’ option in the
File menu).

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 Greenstone User Interface

An end-user accesses a Greenstone digital library collection through its user interface. Before
building your collection, it’s very important to understand how Greenstone supports various features
in the user interface.
Although the user interface of
END-USER INTERFACE different Greenstone collections may
FEATURES appear remarkably similar, each one
can provide varying search, browse
and display features, depending on
Collection Searching
access requirements, nature of
documents comprising the collection
Document Browsing and metadata associated with these
documents.
Presentation of Search
Results As a digital library developer you can
define the desired end-user
Multilingual Support interface features for your
collection.

Let’s have a look at these features…

Greenstone User Interface

Greenstone supports different ways of searching collections. They can be grouped in two main
categories: “plain search” (through Google-like single search box) and “form-based search”.

Collection Searching
PLAIN SEARCH
Users can search for words or phrases in the full text of the document
Simple or limit the search to a specific index (e.g. document title or author) by
Simple selecting the available index from the drop-down box.
Advanced Boolean queries

FORM-BASED SEARCH

Simple Users can search for words or phrases across different fields.

Users can search for words or phrases across different fields, with support for
Advanced
Boolean query combination, case folding and stemming.

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Greenstone User Interface

Document Browsing

Greenstone supports browsing

of documents in a collection
by specific metadata fields.

Available browse elements for a

collection are shown on the
navigation bar in the
Navigation
collection home page.
bar
Hierarchical browsing of
classification-like structures
(e.g. a subject classification)
with different levels is possible.

Greenstone User Interface

Presentation of Search Results

The web pages the users see when using

Greenstone are not pre-stored but are
generated “on the fly” as they are needed.
This includes the way the browse and
search results appear and individual
documents are presented.

After obtaining a document (selected from

results of browse/search), a user can:

• view complete content or contract it (in a

full-text tagged document),
• highlight matching search terms or not,
and
• detach the document for viewing in a
different window.

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Greenstone User Interface

Multilingual Support

Through the preferences

setting, the user can change
the language of the
Greenstone interface.

Greenstone can also support

indexing and searching of
document collections in
non-Latin scripts.

Greenstone User Interface

So, by selecting “Spanish” will I have documents in

Spanish?

How would you answer this question?

Yes
No

Select the answer of your choice

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 Building Greenstone collections

When you build a collection using Greenstone, you

can choose among three collection building
approaches:

• Collector,
• Command line mode, and
• Librarian Interface.

While the Collector and Librarian Interfaces are easy

to use, the Command line mode requires
understanding and correct usage of the commands
and associated parameters.
The Greenstone Librarian Interface (GLI) provides the
most advanced and at the same time a very user
friendly approach to collection building and metadata
management.
In the next few screens we will look at each of these approaches, by focusing on how to use them
and on available features.

Building Greenstone collections

Approach 1: Collector

The Collector approach provides a web-

based collection building wizard. You
can invoke it by selecting the option
Collector from the Greenstone home
page.

Though collection building is easy, it

does not support assignment and
management of metadata.

Supported functions
L I
How to use it

More details

Click on each button to read the description

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 Building Greenstone collections

Approach 1: Collector

Supported functions The Collector approach supports the following functions:

Create a new collection
Add new material to an existing one
Modify the structure of an existing one
Delete a collection
Write an existing collection to a CD-ROM

How to use it Collection building using the Collector involves the following steps:
Specify collection information - its name and associated info
Specify source data - where the source data comes from
Configure collection - Adjust the configuration options (advanced
use)
Build the collection
Access the collection!
More details More details on using the Collector for building collections
is given in Greenstone digital library 2.50 – User’s guide
(section 3.4). You can find this document in the
Greenstone Digital Library Documentation section
(Resources-software&tools-Greenstone).

Building Greenstone collections

Approach 2: Command line mode

(MS-DOS mode for Win 95/98, ‘cmd’ mode for Win

NT/2000/XP, shell level for Linux)

This approach requires the use of a set of Perl scripts

and thus requires understanding and correct usage of
the commands and associated parameters.
Assignment and management of metadata is very
difficult.
Supported functions

How to use it

More details

Click on each button to read the description

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 Building Greenstone collections

Approach 2: Command line mode

Supported functions Command line mode supports simple and advanced collection building.

Collection building using the Collector involves the following steps:

Set up Greenstone environment variables
Use mkcol script to create new collection
How to use it Move source documents to the import folder of the new collection
Adjust the configuration options by editing the collect.cfg file
Import the collection using import script
Build the collection using the build script

More details of using the Command line mode for building collections
More details is given in Greenstone digital library 2.50 – Developer’s guide (section
1, pages 1-25). You can find this document in the Greenstone
Digital Library Documentation section.

Building Greenstone collections

Hmmm…we aren’t expert

developers… can we find a simpler Approach 3: GUI-based Librarian Interface (GLI)
way?? I would like to build collections
without external support… With version 2.40 onwards, Greenstone now includes
the Librarian Interface (GLI), a Java-based interface
for building digital library collections. Installation of GLI
is integrated with installation of Greenstone.

This provides a very user-friendly approach to building

collections. We strongly recommend that, for most
practical purposes, you use GLI for collection building.

Supported functions

How to use it

Yes, we can use GLI! It is very user More details

friendly and it is the most advanced
approach as well! Click on each button to read the description

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 Building Greenstone collections

Approach 3: GUI-based Librarian Interface (GLI)

GLI is the most advanced approach to collection building and also metadata
Supported functions management. The GLI has excellent metadata management support and
also supports definition of custom metadata fields, if required.

Building collections using GLI involves following steps:

• Gathering – gather the source documents that will comprise the
collection
How to use it and associate appropriate metadata element set
• Enriching – assign metadata for each source document
• Designing – specify collection configuration in terms of indexes,
classifiers,
display formats, etc.
• Creating – build the collection
• Previewing – preview the newly built collection

A practical example of collection building using GLI is discussed in lesson 6.2

More details More details of the GLI approach to collection building is given in Greenstone
digital library 2.50 – User’s guide (section 3.2, pages 31-53). You can find this
document in the Greenstone Digital Library Documentation section.

Building Greenstone collections

Now that we have chosen our Before building a Greenstone digital library
approach, the next step is to collection, source documents should be
start building our first collection! prepared carefully to obtain the desired
access (search and browse) and display
features.

The care and attention paid during the

preparation of the source documents will
Let’s check our
reflect on the quality of the digital library
documents first: I
collection offered to the users.
want to be sure
they have been
Particularly, assigning explicit metadata
well prepared and
to each source document during collection
are ready to be
building offers the most powerful approach to
included…
support various browse and field-based
searching features. Metadata information is
also useful in producing a suitable
presentation for search results.

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 Preparation of source collection and metadata

You should consider the following while preparing input documents.

If you wish to support full text searching or if you expect Greenstone to automatically extract metadata
(e.g. document title)…

This will not be possible if source documents are in image formats (e.g. image PDF and JPEG).
Ensure that the input documents are in a format from which Greenstone can extract text (e.g. Text
PDF, Word Doc or RTF, and HTML).

If you expect Greenstone to correctly extract the document ‘Title’ metadata automatically…

It will be useful to assign correct document properties, particularly for Microsoft Word documents.
The first readable text line in the PDF is likely to be used as a document title – ensure that this is
appropriate. Similarly, ensure that HTML documents have meaningful document titles. However, if
you are explicitly assigning the document title as a metadata field and using this for indexing, these
precautions are not necessary.

Preparation of source collection and metadata

You should consider the following while preparing input documents.

If you find that some Word and PDF documents are not getting converted and indexed properly by
Greenstone…

We suggest that you find an alternative way of converting these to HTML and using them for collection
building. Greenstone uses third party software for converting Word and PDF documents and since there
are so many versions of these documents, conversion may sometimes fail.

If you want to support section level searching or hierarchical browsing of large documents…

You should incorporate appropriate full text tags in the text document. You will find more details of
full text tagging in the following documents:
Tagging Document Files, Section 3.3, in Greenstone Digital Library User’s Guide 2.50;
Librarian Interface: adding and using metadata (gsdl-4-GLI2.pdf) in Greenstone training
workshop material.
You can find these documents in the Greenstone Digital Library Documentation section (Resources-
software&tools-Greenstone).
…

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 Preparation of source collection and metadata

A key decision to be made during the preparation of

Metadata
MetadataElement
ElementSet
Set the input collection is what metadata scheme is to
be used.
(e.g.
(e.g.Dublin
Dublincore)
core)

+
Adoption of Dublin Core should be considered
seriously since Greenstone has internal support for
this standard.

Encoding
EncodingSchemes
Schemes Decisions regarding encoding schemes (cataloguing
rules, vocabulary control schemes) to be used and
(cataloguing/vocabulary formats for rendering of content of each field are also
(cataloguing/vocabulary important.
control
controlschemes)
schemes)
These decisions lie outside the digital library software,
but form a very important part of the collection
building process. The metadata element set and
the cataloguing/vocabulary control schemes together
Metadata
MetadataScheme
Scheme comprise the “metadata scheme” (or “metadata
specification”) for the collection and should be
adhered to during collection building.

Summary

Greenstone is a freely available suite of software for building and distributing digital
library collections on the Internet or on CD-ROM.

Digital library developers can benefit from the variety of features supported by
Greenstone, such as multiplatform availability, the capability of providing access in
different ways and managing different file formats, media and languages. Greenstone
also allows powerful indexing, search and browse methods.

When you install Greenstone, you can select the type of setup that best suits your
needs. Available types are: custom, source code, local library and web library setup.

You can choose among three collection building approaches: Collector,

Command line mode, and Librarian Interface (GLI).

The Librarian Interface provides the most advanced and at the same time a very
user friendly approach to collection building and also metadata management.

Before building collections using Greenstone, pay attention to the preparation

process, including the adoption of a suitable metadata scheme for the collection
being developed.

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Exercises

The following five exercises will help you test your understanding of the concepts covered in
the lesson and provide you with feedback.

Good luck!

Exercise 1

For which of the following operating platforms is Greenstone software available in binary
(executable) form?

Windows
Unix
Linux
Macintosh

Please select the options of your choice (2 or more)

and press “Check Answer”

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Exercise 2

Greenstone uses a standard character encoding format for storing document content in order to
support multiple languages.

What is this encoding standard?

Write the correct word in the box. Then click

on the “Check Answer” button.

Exercise 3

When installing Greenstone in the Windows operating system, the default setup type is…

Write the correct word in the box

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Exercise 4

Look at the Greenstone end-user interface below. What kind of collection searching does it provide?

Plain search - simple

Plain search - advanced
Form-based search – simple
Form-based search - advanced

Select the answer of your choice

Exercise 5

Which one of the following collection building approaches supports metadata management?

Collector
Librarian Interface (GLI)
Command line mode

Please click on the answer of your choice

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 Resources on this CD

Greenstone software (v.2.51)

Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library

collections. This distribution includes everything you need to run
Greenstone (including a pre-built demonstration collection) and to build
new Greenstone collections. The Greenstone Digital Library Software (an
open source product licensed by the University of Waikato) is being
provided by UNESCO as a contribution to IMARK.

From Paper to Collection

This document explains how to create CD-ROM collections from paper

documents. It describes in full detail the procedures and economics
involved in the scanning and optical character recognition (OCR)
processes, so that you end up with text in the right format to apply the
Greenstone software (also provided on this CD). This document is being
provided by UNESCO as a contribution to IMARK.

If you want to know more…

Online Resources:

Greenstone - Configuration files of demo collections in New Zealand

Digital Library project: (http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-
bin/library?a=p&p=colcfg)

Ian H. Witten. Examples of practical digital libraries: Collections built

internationally using Greenstone. D-Lib Magazine, March 2003.
(http://dlib.org/dlib/march03/witten/03witten.html )

Greenstone training workshop material. Greenstone Digital Library Project

and NCSI, IISc. 2003: (http://www.greenstone.org/)

Customizing the Greenstone User Interface. An illustrated guide to

customizing the Greenstone user interface. Written by Allison Zhang of the
Washington Research Library Consortium
(http://www.wrlc.org/dcpc/UserInterface/interface.htm)

Additional Reading:

Ian H. Witten and David Bainbridge 2003. How to build a digital library.
Morgan Kaufman Publishers

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