Greenstone

Tonight, I've been working on a project for my internship. My hope was to create a mock-up of the website using Greenstone. Greenstone is open source software that is used to create and manage digital archives, allowing the collection to be accessible via the web. Greenstone is the product of the New Zealand Digital Library Project, and has been endorsed by the Communication Sub-Commission of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO as part of New Zealand's contribution to UNESCO's programme (see website for more details). After talking to some of my colleagues at Emory about DSpace, and explaining the difficulty I had just unbundling the software, it was suggested that I try Greenstone.



With the help of Anna Semon from the AMNH and Dennis Blanton at Fernbank, I was able to get a sampling of images from a field survey at St. Catherine's Island, along with metadata. Using Dublin Core Metadata Element Set which was one of the options in Greenstone, I was able to add the metadata provided by Anna. I'm still trying to figure out the software, but it's very staightforward. There are pretty detailed instructions for each of the sections, and I was able to load the content and view the gallery. One of the problems I encountered was indexing and was unable to figure out how to successfully create the fields for searching the collection. I am not sure what went wrong. Maybe I should have completed the settings before building the library. At any rate, I hope that I can delete and rebuild the index, and that will fix the problem.

IST 759 Planning and Creating a Digital Library with David Lankes

I've been taking IST 759 Planning and Designing Digital Library Services with David Lankes this spring semester at Syracuse. I've learned a LOT of things in this class. I think the one main thing I've learned is to not be afraid of technology, and even more than that, don't be afraid to LEARN technology.

For the final project of this class, we were asked to create a portfolio. The portfolio will be used to display all of the technologies we've used in this class. It will show its installation and use, and we will be graded accordingly.

In this class, we were introduced to various open source technologies:
Apache Friends - XAMPP (which is a WAMP environment - Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP)
Sphider - a lightweight search engine in PHP
Gallery
TikiWiki
WordPress Free Blog Software
Blogger
Using these applications, all open source, we were to develop a digital library.
I've given some information on each of the applications, and have also added some screen shots of the work I've done. We were also asked to create a portfolio which will be graded.

Moving Right Along....PROGRESS!

After many months of researching and revisions, I finally wrapped up a
project I've been working on in my internship (I'll soon link my digital proposal on this site)! The curator at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Dennis Blanton, and I have finally reached what I think to be the final version of my digital library
proposal. I'm putting some finishing touches on the document and will
post it soon.

The past few weeks I've been working on creating a Wiki, a blog (not this one, but one for my Planning and Creating a Digital Library class), indexing, creating PHP forms, and creating a photo gallery for my internship. I will continue to create the website and hopefully create an archive that will be very similar to the one the museum wants.

This week, I will also explore some other management tools like DSpace and ContentDM. Although I'm enjoying building my own using XAMPP, homegrown systems are
not easy, as my buddy Lichen Rancourt pointed out. It takes someone with a lot of programming experience, and for sustainability, it's best to have something like DSpace or contentDM. Otherwise, if I'm stuck with all the knowledge, it would be
hard on the museum if something happened where I would have to leave. I hope I can figure out a way to share all of these things I've been learning with you. I will be putting together a portfolio for Lankes' 759 course, so hopefully I will be able to share that with other classes, since it will reflect the work I've been doing with my internship. Since I'm creating a blog for the course, I will probably load the same or similar content on this one, or until I can figure out how to link the one I created in my LAMP environment.

Digital Library Sustainability

If you take away nothing else about digital library sustainability, remember:

...an important and key piece of sustainability is to ensure that your digital archive is considered a LIBRARY (long-term) and not a PROJECT (short-term). It is very important that the digital archive is thought of as an integral part of the organization and not just an “add-on”.

About Me, professionally

My name is Lakegan Harris and I am from Atlanta, GA. I am near the end of the Masters in Library and Information Studies program at Syracuse University, hopefully finishing up at the end of summer semester, 2006. I am currently working at Emory University where I am a cataloger and also do acquisitions work. I decided a couple of semesters ago to pursue the CAS in Advanced Studies in Digital Libraries . In pursuing a career in Digital Libraries, I thought it would be to my benefit to do an internship, so I decided to line up one at a local museum, Fernbank Museum of Natural History. I have been working with a curator at the museum on developing a plan/proposal to create a digital archive for a collection of artifacts. I have been exploring metadata schemas, content management tools, and have developed an architecture for their webpage (GULP!). I’m excited about continuing this opportunity and look forward to sharing it with my fellow classmates. I’m currently taking IST 759 Planning and Designing Digital Library Services with David Lankes. This class will hopefully teach me how to use different databases and programs like PHP and MySQL, giving me ideas for designing and managing the website for the Fernbank’s artifact collection.