Use of the open source software Greenstone to develop a decentralized cooperative digital library

Abstract

When the Latin America and the Caribbean Social Sciences Network of Virtual Libraries was created 10 years ago, it was an easy decision to work with open software because the Latin America and the Caribbean Social Science Council (Clacso), an academic network with 195 member institutes located in 21 countries, promotes the use of open software and open access to communicate and exchange research results in digital formats. The development and daily operations of this cooperative digital library are described, including Greenstone for the reading room with advanced search capacity and Plone for the graphical interface; both allow decentralized content management with 9.000 full text publications (books, journal articles, working documents, papers) and databases.