The Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS/X and Source distributions of Greenstone v2.75
are now available for download from our sourceforge page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/greenstone or via our download page

Notable Changes

– Language updates to various components:
(Language – Moderator Name)
Russian – Vyacheslav Bakharev
Arabic – Usama Salama, Salih Mustafa
Simplified Chinese – Yan Han
Spanish – Jesus Tramullas
Romanian – Constantinescu Nicolaie
Marathi – Shubhada Nagarkar

– Bug Fixes for Windows Vista
Check for writablity of GSDLHOME before starting GSDL and GLI
Use windows Temp directory for temp files to prevent ‘Access Denied’ errors

We aim to have full Vista compatibility by the next release

– Some new artwork for GLI

We want to ensure that Greenstone works well for you. Please report any
problems to one of the Greenstone mailing lists.

Greenstone3 v3.03 has been released for Windows, GNU/Linux and in Source form (it runs on the Mac no problem; just recompile from source). This release finally contains all the features in Greenstone2, including OAI-PMH and Remote Building support (which are new to this version). It is now very easy to install — just as easy as Greenstone2! This release has been extensively tested.

The principal difference between Greenstone2 and Greenstone3 is the format language. Greenstone3 supports more sophisticated XSLT format statements. Right now they are more complex to use, but developments in the pipeline will make it far easier than Greenstone2 in future. (The only other differences are that Greenstone3 still lacks collaging, and collection/document-level authentication.)

There is one known issue. We forgot to ensure that collections built with Greenstone2 are automatically converted when loaded into GLI under Greenstone3. We will add this facility, but for now a manual conversion program is available here; instructions for its use appear in Greenstone3 for Greenstone2 Users.

Greenstone2 will continue to be supported for a long time yet (years), but ultimately we see Greenstone3 replacing it. See the Greenstone3 home page and the Wiki for more details.

International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management at Kathmandu, Nepal

HealthNet Nepal and Tribhuvan University, Central Library, Kathmandu, Nepal is organizing ICIKM-2008 from March 24-29, 2008 at Kathmandu, Nepal. The theme is “Information and Knowledge Management in a Connected World: A Challenge for the Developing Countries.” The conference will include a 3-day Greenstone workshop.

One of the major strength of the ICIKM-2008 is three days pre-conference workshop on Greenstone Digital Library, OJS (Open Journal System) and Open Conference System (OCS), and Integrated Library System–KOHA. The concerned developer of the software package i.e. Prof. Ian Witten, Mr. Alec Smecher and Mr. Chris Cormack runs these courses.

You are invited to attend and register to the Conference. We believe you and your colleagues will benefit tremendously from this conference. We encourage you and your colleagues to attend and share experiences with others in the conference.

Registration Information:
For details about the conference registration fee for all presenters and participants and other registration information, please refer to the conference website: www.icikm-2008.com.np

With regards,

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Mohan Raj Pradhan
Member-Secretary
ICIKM-2008
e-mail: [email protected]

We are glad to announce that a three day Advanced Workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL) is organised at National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore from December 26th to 28th, covering Multilingual capability and Interoperability concepts in GSDL, for those who are familiar with basic concepts of GSDL. The workshop is supported by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) under Technology Information and Facilitation Programme.

Workshop title: DSIR-NCSI Advanced Workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL)

Venue: NCSI, IISc, Bangalore

Date : December 26th to 28th

Prerequisite: Knowledge of basic features and Installation of GSDL.

Topics covered: Multilingual capability and Interoperability in GSDL

Workshop Fee: No registration fee is charged. Working lunch and tea will be provided during the workshop dates. However, participants have to take care of their travel, board and lodging. On request accommodation for participants during the dates 25th to 28th December 2007 will be provided at the ‘Hoysala House’ hostel of IISc. Maximum of 20 participants will be taken for the workshop based on the experience, in using GSDL. Workshop coordinator: Ms. Anuradha.K.T., NCSI, IISc, Bangalore 560 012

Registration: Send an email to [email protected] or [email protected] giving the following details:
1. Name:
2. Official Address and email
3. Experience in using GSDL.
———————————————————————
Ms.K.T.Anuradha E-mail: [email protected]
Senior Technical Officer URL:vidya-mapak.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
National Centre for Science Information
Indian Institute of Science
Karnataka, Bangalore 560 012
India
FAX:(+91-80) 23601426/23600683
Tel:(+91-80) 23600271/22932511

A new greenstone mailing list has been set up for users in the Southern Africa sub-region.

The address is: [email protected]

Renate Morgenstern, Head of Technical Services and Systems at the University of Namibia Library and the sub-regional coordinator for the Greenstone pilot project for Southern Africa, says:

“This is a test of the Greenstone users discussion list which has been set up by the University of Namibia Library in its role as sub-regional centre within the project.

“All Greenstone users in Southern Africa are invited to address their technical problems to this list, for which I will be the moderator. We are looking forward to your active participation on this list in both submitting and responding to queries. Queries which cannot be answered by the list members will be forwarded to the Greenstone team in New Zealand and the response will be given back on this list.”

DL Consulting are pleased to announce that the redesigned Papers Past has now been officially released. Papers Past is a collection of 19th and early 20th century newspapers belonging to the National Library of New Zealand. The new site is a complete redesign, and is based on Greenstone. DL Consulting have been working on it with the National Library of New Zealand since mid-2006.

Read more at the DL Consulting Blog.

The developers’ section of this website has been launched. This gives greenstone contributors access to a more extensive and more integrated set of online development tools.

These tools include greenstone trac, our new bug tracking system and source code browser, greenstone svn, our source code repository, the greenstone wiki, the home-base for greenstone documentation, and the greenstone mailing lists.

Programmers, language maintainers, document writers, feature requesters, and anyone else who wants to help with greenstone development should register as a developer. Once you are registered, you use a single username and password to access all of the greenstone tools.

Please post a comment if you have questions, comments or suggestions. Happy development!

For some time now the Waikato team has been experimenting in the lab with multimedia capabilities for digital libraries. Thanks to funding from the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST) this will now go “main stream” in the Greenstone project. The research programme, which spans the next four years, includes content analysis for images, audio and video, with specialisations for digitized newspapers and music. From this analysis, enriched media content can be stored and utilised in the digital library.

We also, at this stage, predict a stronger role played by AJAX in the development of client-side interfaces to access this media rich content in Greenstone. Veronica’s realistic electronic books is one such existing example. Tangible software outcomes from the research — for instance, video streaming playback that exploits a suite of video processing capabilities such as keyframe identification — will go into the Greenstone code base, managed through an extension mechanism.

Veronica Liesaputra won the “Best Demo” prize at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in Vancouver, Canada (19-22 June 2007) for her work on realistic electronic books. To see some of the beautiful books that she has produced, visit nzdl.org/books. To see them in a Greenstone collection, look here. (You switch can switch this facility on in the Preferences menu. To make the book option available, switch on HTMLPlug’s tidy_html option.)

I am planning to conduct these Greenstone workshops:

9 July 2007 Kuching, Malaysia: One-day workshop (see http://cita07.org)

19-20 Sept 2007 New York City: Introductory and One-Day Workshops (contact Anthony Troncale, atroncale [at] metro.org

1-5 Oct 2007 University of Namibia: 5-day course (contact John Rose, john.rose1 [at] free.fr)

10 Dec 2007 Hanoi, Vietnam: One-day workshop at ICADL (see http://icadl2007.vista.gov.vn/)

We just finished a very successful UNESCO-sponsored 4-day workshop at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji.