The development and usage of the Greenstone digital library software

✍ Scribed by Ian H. Witten

• Publisher: American Society for Information Science and Technology
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 308 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0095-4403
• DOI: 10.1002/bult.2008.1720350209

✦ Synopsis

collection in New Zealand's Māori language, a chance contact with a small humanitarian organization and a formal link with UNESCO. In retrospect, these events conspired to set the project's direction. We then review the immense importance of digital libraries in developing countries and the special requirements imposed by the conditions that prevail there. Finally we discuss efforts to establish regional support organizations for Greenstone in India and Africa.

First, however, let us begin by summarizing salient aspects of this open source software package and its user population.

Platforms.

Greenstone runs on all popular operating systems: all Windows versions, Linux, Mac -even the iPod. It is very easy to install. For the default Windows installation absolutely no configuration is necessary, and end users routinely install Greenstone on their personal laptops or workstations. Institutional users run it on their main web server, where it interoperates with standard web server software such as Apache.