An Asian Training Workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software
14-08-2003 (Paris)
A UNESCO Asian regional training workshop on the Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL) was successfully conducted at the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India during 6-8 August 2003. This is the first in a series of such international workshops planned and supported by UNESCO Communication and Information (CI) programme, to promote the development and sharing of digital library collections using the Greenstone package.
The next workshops in this series will be held:
- for Africa at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar from 8 to 12 September 2003 (contact is Hezekiel Dlamini, hezekiel.dlamini@unesco.unon.org) and
- for Central Asia at State Scientific Research Institute of Kazakhstan from 13 to 15 October 2003 (contact is Sergey Karpov, almaty@unesco.org, http://www.unesco.kz/ci/projects/greenstone).
Greenstone is a freely available suite of software for building and distributing such 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. The trilingual (English-French-Spanish) Greenstone CD-ROM is available from all UNESCO Advisers for Communication and Information or from John Rose (j.rose@unesco.org).
It 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. Use of this package internationally is growing very rapidly. Increasing activity on Greenstone mailing lists is an indication of its growing popularity. Wide varieties of digital collections have been developed using this package, including historical, educational, cultural, and research, in several languages. UNESCO is promoting GSDL with the goal of ‘deployment of DL’s for sharing public domain information’.
The Bangalore workshop was attended by 17 participants from 13 countries in the Asia/ Pacific region: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Most of the participants were from libraries and information centers attached to national level institutions in these countries. The workshop, including the course content, was designed and conducted by resource persons from NCSI, Indian Institute of Science. The workshop covered the following aspects of the Greenstone package (version 2.40): Overview, installation, searching and browsing, collection building, collection configuration, interface customization, librarian interface (GLI), full text tagging, MGPP and multilingual support. Most of the presentation and demonstration sessions were followed by laboratory sessions where the participants experimented with the package through carefully designed exercises. Each participant had a dedicated workstation with Windows 2000 and Linux Red Hat 7.2 operating systems. Apart from the printed course material, Greenstone and associated software were distributed to the participants on CD-ROM.
Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, Director, Indian Indian Institute of Science inaugurated the workshop on 6th August morning. He emphasized the need for reducing the knowledge divide that exists in some of the African countries by extending to them such training programmes and ICT facilities. He also called upon the information professionals to consider ways of reducing the gap between information and knowledge. In her opening remarks, Dr. Susanne Ornager, Adviser, Communication and Information, Asia/Pacific, UNESCO, New Delhi, stressed the key role played by ICTs in provision of improved library and information services. Though technology is bringing in changes, the role of information professional in providing access to information continues to be the same. Appropriate strategies have to be adopted for managing change brought about by technology. Earlier, while welcoming the participants, Dr. T.B. Rajashekar, Associate Chairman, NCSI, and workshop coordinator, mentioned that the Centre brought to this regional workshop the expertise and experience of
organizing two national level workshops on Greenstone.
Based on formal and informal feedback received from the participants, the workshop was quite successful in imparting conceptual and practical understanding in using Greenstone for developing digital collections.
- for Africa at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar from 8 to 12 September 2003 (contact is Hezekiel Dlamini, hezekiel.dlamini@unesco.unon.org) and
- for Central Asia at State Scientific Research Institute of Kazakhstan from 13 to 15 October 2003 (contact is Sergey Karpov, almaty@unesco.org, http://www.unesco.kz/ci/projects/greenstone).
Greenstone is a freely available suite of software for building and distributing such 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. The trilingual (English-French-Spanish) Greenstone CD-ROM is available from all UNESCO Advisers for Communication and Information or from John Rose (j.rose@unesco.org).
It 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. Use of this package internationally is growing very rapidly. Increasing activity on Greenstone mailing lists is an indication of its growing popularity. Wide varieties of digital collections have been developed using this package, including historical, educational, cultural, and research, in several languages. UNESCO is promoting GSDL with the goal of ‘deployment of DL’s for sharing public domain information’.
The Bangalore workshop was attended by 17 participants from 13 countries in the Asia/ Pacific region: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Most of the participants were from libraries and information centers attached to national level institutions in these countries. The workshop, including the course content, was designed and conducted by resource persons from NCSI, Indian Institute of Science. The workshop covered the following aspects of the Greenstone package (version 2.40): Overview, installation, searching and browsing, collection building, collection configuration, interface customization, librarian interface (GLI), full text tagging, MGPP and multilingual support. Most of the presentation and demonstration sessions were followed by laboratory sessions where the participants experimented with the package through carefully designed exercises. Each participant had a dedicated workstation with Windows 2000 and Linux Red Hat 7.2 operating systems. Apart from the printed course material, Greenstone and associated software were distributed to the participants on CD-ROM.
Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, Director, Indian Indian Institute of Science inaugurated the workshop on 6th August morning. He emphasized the need for reducing the knowledge divide that exists in some of the African countries by extending to them such training programmes and ICT facilities. He also called upon the information professionals to consider ways of reducing the gap between information and knowledge. In her opening remarks, Dr. Susanne Ornager, Adviser, Communication and Information, Asia/Pacific, UNESCO, New Delhi, stressed the key role played by ICTs in provision of improved library and information services. Though technology is bringing in changes, the role of information professional in providing access to information continues to be the same. Appropriate strategies have to be adopted for managing change brought about by technology. Earlier, while welcoming the participants, Dr. T.B. Rajashekar, Associate Chairman, NCSI, and workshop coordinator, mentioned that the Centre brought to this regional workshop the expertise and experience of
organizing two national level workshops on Greenstone.
Based on formal and informal feedback received from the participants, the workshop was quite successful in imparting conceptual and practical understanding in using Greenstone for developing digital collections.
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