Building Digital Collection with Greenstone: Development and Customization

Transcription

1 ; Volume 05; Issue No. 1; Year 2012; ISSN ; Int. j. lib. sci. Copyright 2012 by IJLS, CESER Publications Building Digital Collection with Greenstone: Development and Customization Ahmad Parvez 1 King Saud University pahmad.c@ksu.edu.sa Mohammad Aqil 2 King Saud University maqil.c@ksu.edu.sa Md Tarique Anwer 3 HKL Educational and Charitable Society tarikamu11@gmail.com Abstract In this paper the authors have described, how digital library collections can be developed and customized with the most updated version of Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL). An experiment collection has been developed to demonstrate the various steps involved in the development of digital collection. The digital collection developed on GSDL has very effective full-text searching and metadata-based browsing facilities i.e. subject hierarchy, author search and so on. The entire process of developing digital collection in GSDL involves many steps such as, to assign metadata to each document or group of documents, designing the collection, document formats, searchable indexes, partition indexes, Browsing classifiers, and finally creating the collection. The present paper will prove an effective tool to LIS community in the development of digital collection on GSDL window platform. Keywords: Digital Library, Digital Collections, Greenstone Digital library Software, GSDL 1. Introduction This is the era of Information & Communication Technology (ICT), each profession has been influenced by the ICT based products & services and LIS profession is not an exception. Most of the services of today s libraries are based on ICT products & services; digital collection and the digital library software on which digital collection developed, are the most popular and revolutionary phenomenon of the LIS profession. A digital library system is an integrated set of programs to organize the digital information in text, audio, and video formats and make it accessible to end users via a computer network. One of the most popular digital library software is Green Stone Digital Library Software (GSDL), which is open source software produced by the New Zealand Digital Library project (Available at New Zealand Digital Library Project). According to Witten (2003) GSDL provides a way of building and distributing digital library collections, opening up new possibilities for organizing information and making it available over the Internet or on CD-ROM. GSDL is very user friendly and easy to use compare to other open source software in the discipline such as Dspace, E-prints, open Repository etc. The collection can be developed and maintained in a various styles and format. It is easy to export the GDSL collection on DSpace, fedora METS and others. We can also export one or more collections to a self-installing Windows CD/DVD ROM

2 2. Literature Review: Sutedjo, Theng, & Theng (2010) argued that the recent development in digital libraries open the prospects to use of digital library a means for building and facilitating access to digital cultural resources by using the GSDL. Matusiak and Munkhmandakh, (2009) discussed a digitization project of Mongolian newspapers and periodicals collection to make them accessible via Internet. The authors specifically discussed the problems and challenges of this project such as large format, complex page layout, and the poor quality print including the complexities of International digital libraries those use non-latin characters. Greenstone offers multilingual support and was used to create a digital collection of these rare Mongolian publications. Witten (2003) briefly review the selected digital libraries from different countries such as China, Germany, India, UK, and US; from kinds of library like historical, educational, cultural, & Research; and with different types of materials for example text, images, voice etc. so that to give a feeling for how Greenstone is being used for public digital libraries throughout the world. 3. Statement of the problem: This paper is basically based on the authors working experience on GSDL. The study is primarily conducted to demonstrate a step by step process and encourage the LIS professionals to develop user friendly digital collection with the help of GSDL software. The study is also intended to explain how to create browsing classifiers, partition indexes, and customization of important section of GSDL. The present study only talks about how to play with the existing features of the GSDL. It does not cover the programming aspects of the GSDL customization neither explain how to add a new feature or function in GSDL. 4. Methodology / Research design: The authors have developed an experimental collection in GSDL taking into consideration the developers as well as the end users approach. Moreover, the authors have used screen shots as live examples in order to explain the ideas. 5. Greenstone Digital Library Software Greenstone digital library Software (GSDL) is one of the programs for effectively storing, organizing, and distributing the documents in the digital format. 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. It provides a fully searchable, metadata-driven digital library. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the General Public License (GNU) ( According to Witten, Bainbridge, & Boddie (2001) Information collections built by Greenstone combine full-text search with browsing indexes based on different metadata types. There are several ways for users to find information, although they differ between collections depending on the metadata available and the collection design. 5.1 Features of Greenstone: The Authors such as Witten, et.al (2001), Iqbal & Ali (2008), and there are many who enlisted the features of GSDL in their Research work. Some of the significant features of GSDL are mentioned here as follows: 15

3 It runs on multi-platform (Windows and Linux, Mac, Mobile phone); Additional plug-ins can be written to accommodate new document format; Classifiers can be modified according to the needs, to cope up with the new kinds of browsing indexes based on metadata; Based on Unicode, separate indexes can be created for different languages, as well as a plug-in allows to automatic language recognition; The interface is available in several languages and it is very easy to add new language; It can restrain several gigabytes documents in different formats, compression is used to reduce the size of the indexes and text; Compatible with Z39.50 protocol, so it has supported by external servers, so that collections can be accessed by external clients; User interface: user can retrieve through simple, Boolean searches, also user can browse the various fields: such as titles, date of submission and subject hierarchy etc. Cross collection search is another beauty of GSDL; Supports multimedia files; Collections is easily exportable on CD/DVD; Compatible with DSpace, Fedora, Marcxml etc.; Supports various metadata standards such as: Dublin Core, Australian Govt. Locater service (AGLS) and New Zealand Govt. Locater (NZGL) etc. In addition, it also supports self defined metadata set; Customizable as per the organizations need. 6. Discussion: 6.1 How to build Digital Collection in GSDL Once the GSDL installation has done, user can launch the Greenstone Librarian Interface (GLI) by selecting greenstone from the program s menu. It is an interactive independent Java application platform that runs on the computer that operates the Greenstone digital library server. It is tightly integrated with Greenstone s collection design and creation process. For developing the digital library collection at GLI the authors have gone through the following five steps: Gather the documents into the greenstone; Enrich the documents by assigning the metadata, user can assign the metadata to a folder also; Design the collection as per users needs in terms of full-text search indexes, browsing structures; Formatting of documents, Here we can add the image to each of our collection as well as for user interface; Creating the collection. The authors have developed prototype collection entitled as King Saud University in order to demonstrate the steps involved in building the digital collection in GSDL; also to assess the functionality of GSDL librarian interface. A step by step procedure is presented here with the help of screenshots. 16

4 Figure 1: Starting with Collection To initiate with GLI we must choose existing collection or start with new collection from the file menu as shown in figure 1. Figure 2: Creating a new collection Here, we want to create new collection, click on the file, select the new for creating the new collection as shown in figure 2. Here the title of collection is King Saud University. In the description area we can give the short summary about the collection, and then click ok to completee this step. The system will take Dublin coremetadata by default. In case we want to create our own metadata set, we can use Greenstone Editor for Metadata Set. 6.2 Gathering data For the next step just click on Gather on the menu bar and a new window will open divided into two sections workspace and collections as shown in figure 3. An interactive file tree is shown in the workspace section, where we can browse the files supposed to be included in our digital collection. We can drag and drop selected files into 17

5 the collection section. Drag & drop function will just copy the files and will not affect the location of the original files. Figure 3: Interactive file tree We can play around with our collections such as: to create new folder, move and navigate existing files into folder to adjust the hierarchies, and to delete the files if required. For example we have created a well organized and logical hierarchy of King Saud University collection as it evident from figure no 4. Figure 4: 6.3 Assigning the metadata to Documents The next important step is to assign the metadata to our collection. In the figure no. 5 left side is displaying the document tree of selected collection. Metadata can be assigned to an individual file or group of files (i.e. folder). In case, the metadata are common to a group of files, we can assign the metadata only once and it will get applied to all the files in a particular folder or group of files. 18

6 Figure 5: Metadata Assigning-I We should take every care while assigning the subject because any error at this point will be going to affect our subject hierarchy in the user interface. Figure 6: Metadata Assigning-II Suppose a document is related to Bibliometric study then, it must come under the subject library science. Therefore, we have to assign a subject in the given order: King Saud University College of Arts Library Science Bibliometric Studies. If we miss any component from the given order such as library science the document will not appear under the library science subject hierarchy, instead it will appear under the college of Arts with other parallel collections, such as Education, History etc. Therefore the subject hierarchy is broken. The specific bar is used to create subject hierarchy while we entering the metadata. We can use this symbol by pressing (shift and forward button) as shown in figure 6a). 19

7 Figure 6a 6.4 Design of Collections The next significant step for development of digital collection is the designing of collection. As it is shown in the figure no. 7, there are various facets in this sections that we can configure such as: Document Plug-ins, Search Indexes, Partition Indexes, and Browsing Classifiers Document Plug-ins: In GSDL, all the documents are being processed by modules called plug-ins, and each plug-in may need to be configured by specifying appropriate arguments. We can remove the plug-ins which are not required for a particular collection. For example, we have only word files, in that case we have to keep intact text as well as html plug-in. Rest of the plug-ins either we can remove or leave intact for future use. Figure 7: Documents Plug-ins Search Indexes: After playing with the plug-ins, we have to add full text search indexes for efficient retrieval of our collection. We have added here full text search indexes dc.title, dc.author (means dc.contributor), dc.publishers and one search index to search for all the fields simultaneously. We have added dc.contributor search index as shown in the figure 8. 20

8 Figure 8: Search Indexes Partition Indexes: Partition indexes are built on particular text or metadata sources. The search space can be further controlled by partitioning the indexes, either by language or by a predetermined filter. The authors have decided to include the partition indexes such as: Library, Automation, Repository, Bibliometric and all subjects on the basis of the subject represented by the experiment collection. The process to generate the partition index is clearly explained in figure no. 9. Add the desired term in the field Sub collection filter as library that matches against dc.subject and Keywords, and repeat the index term Library (Make sure that index term should start with capital latter) in the Regular expression to match with field & click <Add Filter>. This filter is applicable to all the files whose dc.subject and Keywords metadata contains the term Library. The same procedure has been followed to add the other filters. After defining the filters, the next tab is assign partition. In order to complete this step, add these filters one by one into appropriate section. For example check the filter automation and click on the add partition tab. In the same way we can add others filter too. In addition, we can add all the filters as a single filter just by checking select all tab. This will help to apply all the filters to a collection or sub collection in single search query. Therefore, it will make a search query broader and ultimately help the end user to build a desired search query. In this section the next tab is Assign languages, it will be helpful in case a user is dealing with multilingual collection Browsing Classifiers: Browsing classifiers is a very significant feature of GSDL. These are to specify what browsing structures and fields we want to develop in Greenstone as demonstrated in figure 9. The browsing classifiers are built by modules called classifiers, which also have various arguments. We have added three browsing classifiers for our experiment collection such as: title, author and subject hierarchy. You have to choose the list from select classifier to add to add title classifiers, and metadata should be dc.title in Basiclassifier followed by choosing the button name as Title or whatever term you wish to assign to your button name. The button name will appear in the greenstone user interface. We have followed the same procedure to add author classifier and so on. As for the partition indexes, user can leave it as intact. 21

9 Figure 9: Adding Browsing Classifiers: Title As shown in figure 10, to add the subject hierarchy classifier, choose hierarchy from select classifier to add menu followed by the selection of metadata and short field by selecting the subject and keywords from drop down menu. We can choose a button name taking into consideration the maximum satisfaction of the users or we can change or edit the button name at the later stage. Figure 10: Adding Browsing Classifiers: Subject Hierarchy 22

10 6.5 Format of the collection The next step for developing digital collection in GSDL is format and the final step is create. When we click on the format tab the new window will appear. Here in this section, we can format and edit various sections such as in general section we can define the creator, and maintainers ids. We can also modify and edit the title, and summary of our collection. In addition we can also assign an image to all the collections developed in order to make them distinguishable from one another. In the search section, we can edit and modify the search index terms. In the cross collection, we can define the cross collection searches, where a user can search the multiple collections simultaneously, but to perform the efficient searches every collection should have exactly the similar indexes. Figure Creating collection: The final step to develop the collection in GSDL is Create. The whole process for developing digital collection is borne by the Greenstone code itself. The building process can be started by simply clicking the Build Collection icon. This is evident from the figure 12 that the collection building process not only shows the text output generated by Greenstone s importing and index- building scripts, but it also shows the progress bar that indicate the overall degree of completion of each script. 23

11 Figure 12: Creating Collections 6.7 Previewing of the collection: We can view the newly developed collection by clicking on the preview collection ; it will navigate us to a new window as shown in the figure 13. Figure 13 As it is evident from the figure no. 13, we can view the different search indexes (title, author, publisher, and all fields) as well as the browsing classifiers (author, subject hierarchy, and title). To navigate on the home page of Experimental digital library simply click on HOME on top right corner as given in figure 14. We can also modify the name of digital library as we have chosen here Experimental Digital Library. This is an image and we can change it from image folder of greenstone installation files. The format of the images must always be GIF. Once the collection has been created this collection will automatically installed and shown on Greenstone home page as the regular 24

12 collection. As it is shown in the figure no. 14, there are two collections represented by two different images. First one is demo collection which has inbuilt in GSDL, second one is King Saud University collection which we have created to explain the whole idea of building digital collection in GSDL. Clicking to King Saud University Collection (Computer Image) will navigate us to home page of that particular collection as shown in figure 13. Figure Retrieving digital collection: The digital collection which we have created with the articles of LIS discipline, have been made available for browsing and searching. It may be accessed by the following techniques. 6.9 Subject Hierarchy: Clicking on the subject hierarchy browsing classifier, will produce a hierarchy of subjects as king Saud University followed by the college of Arts and then Library Science, and under the library Science, there are various sub discipline of library science such as digital library, institutional repository, and library 2.0 etc. as we can see in figure 15. If we click on the any discipline of library science in the given hierarchy, we would be able to access the more narrow aspects of the library science discipline. 25

13 Figure Author and Title: By simply clicking on author browsing classifier, we will get an alphabetical list of authors existing in a particular collection, the same method we can apply to browse the list of titles belongs to a particular collection as shown in the figure 16. Figure Searching Indexes: In our experimental collection, we have uploaded a couple of documents written by the author Parvez Ahmad. If the user want to search the all the documents written by parvez ahmad in this experiment collection. Built the search query as: Select the author from searching indexes and all from partition indexes and type the name parvez or ahmad in the search box. Then the user will be able to retrieve all the documents written by parvez ahmad in this collection. In case, user select the automation term from partition indexes, this query is going to produce the documents related to automation subject by parvez ahmad. Similarly user can build his/her desired search query. 26

14 ` Figure Findings: This study is expected to bring the significant benefits for digital library developers especially those with lesser IT background as well as to end users. Some of the important findings of this study are: This study will help the young library professionals how to develop digital collection in GSDL especially to those who are new to LIS profession; It will help and encourage the LIS professionals to initiate the digital library development in their organizations; It will give a detailed overview of important aspects of GSDL to LIS community; It will help the LIS community in the customization of their digital collection in GSDL; 8. Conclusion GSDL is a comprehensive system for creating and disseminating digital collections. The authors have explained how to create digital collection in GSDL. The authors have covered all the important steps involved in the development of digital collection with GSDL. Moreover, this paper describes functionality and various important features of GSDL from the end users view point such as: searching indexes, partition indexes, and browsing classifiers. The paper has also demonstrated that GSDL is very easy to customize as per the needs of a particular organization and its users. In conclusion we can say that this study will provide a complete overview to LIS community as how to build a digital collection in GSDL, customize, and maintain the collection. Moreover, it is also expected that this paper will prove an asset to LIS community and serve as an easy to use manual for developing digital collection in GSDL. 27

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