====== 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.//**