Ian Witten, a prof in both New Zealand and Alberta, Canada has been working on the New Zealand Digital Library project. Through this work he has developed open source software called Greenstone that helps do this work. From the Digital Library project website comes this descripton:

The Greenstone Digital Library software provides a new way of organizing information and making it available over the Internet or on CD-ROM. It is open-source software, available under the terms of the Gnu public license.

A digital library is made up of a set of collections. Each collection of information comprises several (typically several thousand, or even several million) documents, which share a uniform searching and browsing interface. Collections can be organized in many different ways while retaining a strong family resemblance.

To subscribe to the Greenstone mailing list, go to https://list.scms.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/greenstone-users.

Greenstone is a suite of software which has the ability to serve digital library collections and build new 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 distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source software, available from http://greenstone.org under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
nzdl.org	The New Zealand Digital Library website (http://nzdl.org) contains numerous example collections, all created with the Greenstone software, which are publicly available for you to peruse. They exemplify various searching and browsing options, and include collections in Arabic, Chinese, French, Maori, and Spanish, as well as English. There are also some music collections.
platform	Greenstone runs on Windows, Unix and Mac OS X. The distribution includes ready-to-use binaries for all versions of Windows, and for Linux and Mac OS X. It also includes complete source code for the system, which can be compiled using Microsoft C++ or gcc. Greenstone works with associated software that is also freely available: the Apache Webserver and PERL. The user interface uses a Web browser: typically Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer.
	Many document collections are distributed on CD-ROM using the Greenstone software. For example, the Humanity Development Library contains 1,230 publications ranging from accounting to water sanitation. It runs on minimal computing facilities such as those typically found in developing countries. The information can be accessed by searching, browsing by subject, browsing by titles, browsing by organisation, browsing a list of how-tos, and by randomly viewing the book covers.
customisation	Greenstone is specifically designed to be highly extensible and customisable. New document and metadata formats are accommodated by writing "plugins" (in Perl). Analogously, new metadata browsing structures can be implemented by writing "classifiers." The user interface look-and-feel can be altered using "macros" written in a simple macro language. A Corba protocol allows agents (e.g. in Java) to use all the facilities associated with document collections. Finally, the source code, in C++ and Perl, is available and accessible for modification.
documentation	Extensive documentation for the Greenstone software is available.
mailing list	There is a mailing list intended primarily for discussions about the Greenstone digital library software. Active users of Greenstone should consider joining the mailing list and contributing to the discussions. To subscribe, go to https://list.scms.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/greenstone-users. To send a message to the list, address it to greenstone-users@list.scms.waikato.ac.nz.
bugs	We want to ensure that this software works well for you. Please report any bugs to greenstone@cs.waikato.ac.nz
in the works	Greenstone 3 is a complete redesign and reimplementation which retains all the advantages of Greenstone 2 (the current version)--for example, it is multilingual, multiplatform, and highly configurable. It incorporates all the features of the existing system, and is backwards compatible: that is, it can build and run existing collections without modification. Written in Java, it is structured as a network of independent modules that communicate using XML: thus it runs in a distributed fashion and can be spread across different servers as necessary. This modular design increases the flexibility and extensibility of Greenstone. The new version is expected to be available for experimental use by 31 October 2003. An initial design for the system is outlined in "The design of Greenstone 3: An agent based dynamic digital library" (download PDF).

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