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+====== Overview of Greenstone ======
+//**Part of the [[en:beginner:index|Greenstone Beginner's Guide]]**// \\
+Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library
+collections. It is not a digital library but a tool for building digital libraries.
+It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet in
+the form of a fully-searchable, metadata-driven digital library. It is a comprehensive system
+for constructing and presenting collections of
+thousands or millions of documents, including text, images, audio and video. It has been developed
+and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO in Belgium. It is
+open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the
+ [[http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html|GNU General Public License]].
+Being open source, Greenstone is readily extensible, and benefits
+from the inclusion of GNU-licensed modules for full-text retrieval, database management,
+and text extraction from proprietary document formats. Only through international cooperative
+efforts will digital library software become sufficiently comprehensive to meet the world's
+needs with the richness and flexibility that users deserve.
+=====Available Platforms=====
+Greenstone runs on all versions of Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS-X.
+ The main distribution of Greenstone allows for easy installation, and requires
+no configuration.
+===== Major Versions =====
+There are two major versions of Greenstone: Greenstone2 and Greenstone3. Greenstone3 is a complete redesign and reimplementation of the original Greenstone digital library software (Greenstone2), and
+is recommended, as it will eventually become the production version of the Digital Library
+software the group supports.
+Learn more about the differences between the two versions [[en:user:gs2_or_gs3|here]].
+Much of the documentation is similar or identical for the two major versions.
+Where the versions diverge, you will find a tabbed section like this:
+<tabbox Greenstone3>You will find Greenstone3-specific information here.<tabbox Greenstone2>You will find Greenstone2-specific information here.</tabbox>
+Simply select the tab corresponding to the version you install.
+===== Documents =====
+The plugins distributed with Greenstone can process a wide variety of [[en:user:document_types|document types]],
+including:
+  * plain text, Word, and PDF documents
+  * HTML pages
+  * Powerpoint presentations
+  * Excel spreadsheets
+  * images
+  * MARC records
+  * and more!
+In addition, new plugins can be written for different document types. Non-textual
+material can either be linked to textual documents or accompanied by textual descriptions
+(such as figure captions) to allow full-text searching and browsing.
+Unicode, which is a standard scheme for representing the character sets
+used in the world's languages, is used throughout Greenstone. This allows documents in any language to
+be processed and displayed in a consistent manner. Collections have been built containing
+Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Māori and Spanish. In addition, the Greenstone interface
+is available in all the above languages (and more).
+===== Collections =====
+<tabbox Greenstone3>
+In Greenstone, documents are gathered into individually organized **collections**. These
+collections are all part of a library (called a **site**), and you can have multiple
+sites in a single Greenstone3 installation.
+<tabbox Greenstone2>
+In Greenstone, you create **collections** of documents, and a typical digital library built with Greenstone will contain many separate,
+individual organized collections.
+</tabbox>
+==== Navigation ====
+ Collections can be accessed through both //[[en:user:searching|searching]]// and //[[en:user:browsing|browsing]]//.
+When you create Greenstone collections, you can tailor the searching and browsing facilities.
+==== Distribution ====
+Collections are accessed over the Internet or published,
+in precisely the same form, on a self-installing Windows CD-ROM. Compression
+is used to compact the text and indexes.
+===== Additional Resources =====
+  * [[http://wiki.greenstone.org/wiki/gsdoc/others/Greenstone_history.htm|A history of the Greenstone Digital Library Software.]]
+  * [[http://www.greenstone.org/factsheet|Greenstone Fact Sheet]]
+  * [[http://www.greenstone.org|Greenstone web site]]
+  * [[http://www.ils.unc.edu/~sheble/greenstone/survey.html|Form from 2006 user survey]]
+  * [[http://www.ils.unc.edu/~sheble/greenstone/survey-report.html|Results from 2006 user survey]]
+**//The next section explains the [[en:beginner:install_basic|basic installation]] of Greenstone Digital Library Software.//**