Greenstone in practice: Implementations of an open source digital library system

Abstract

The Greenstone digital library software is a comprehensive, open‐source system for constructing, presenting, and maintaining digital collections. 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. It is widely used internationally, and collections exist in many of the world's languages. Greenstone runs under Unix, Windows and Mac (OS/X) and is issued under the GNU general public license.Selecting and implementing Greenstone helped many digital library practitioners build comprehensive and flexible digital collections at relatively low cost, and allowed them to tailor the software for local environments and organizational needs.The panel, consisting of Greenstone developer and implementers, will introduce Greenstone software and demonstrate installation and collection building, present customized Greenstone user interfaces, discuss technical and organizational aspects of Greenstone implementations at their organizations, report the results of the 2004 Greenstone User Survey, which focused on support mechanisms, as well as the characteristics of organizations implementing Greenstone, their audiences and system needs.