Appendix B Glossary of terms

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Term	Meaning
autoconf	Unix program used to configure the Greenstone software installation package to suit your system
Autorun	Windows feature that starts a program automatically whenever a CD-ROM is inserted
Boolean query	Query to an information retrieval system that may contain AND, OR, NOT
Browsing	Accessing a collection by scanning an organized list of metadata values associated with the documents (such as author, title, date, keywords)
buildcol.pl	Greenstone program used to build collections
Building	Process of creating the indexing and browsing structures that are used to access a collection
C++	Programming language in which the majority of the Greenstone software is written
Casefolding	Making uppercase and lowercase words look the same, for searching purposes
CGI	Common Gateway Interface, a scheme that allows users to activate programs on the host computer by clicking on web pages
CGI script	Code associated with a button, menu, or link on a web page that specifies what the host computer is to do when it is clicked
cgi-bin	Directory in which CGI scripts are stored
Classifier	Greenstone code module that examines document metadata to form an index for browsing
Collection	Set of documents that are brought together under a uniform searching and browsing interface
Collection configuration file	File that specifies how a collection is to be imported and built, what indexes and language interfaces are to be provided, etc.
Collection server	Program responsible for providing access to a collection when it is being used
Configuration file	See collection configuration file, main configuration file, site configuration file
CVS	Concurrent Versioning System, a scheme for maintaining source code used throughout Greenstone
db2txt	Greenstone tool for viewing a GDBM database as text (see GDBM)
Demo collection	A subset of the Humanities Development Library, distributed with the Greenstone software and used for illustration in this tutorial
Digital library	Collection of digital objects (text, audio, video), along with methods for access and retrieval, and for selection, organization, and maintenance
DL	Development Library, A Greenstone collection of humanitarian information for developing countries
Document	Basic unit from which digital library collections are constructed; it may include text, graphics, sound, video, etc.
Dublin core	A standard way of describing metadata
Fast CGI	Facility that allows CGI scripts to remain continuously active so that they do not have to be restarted from scratch every time they are invoked
Filter program	That part of a Greenstone collection server that implements querying and browsing operations
Format string	A string that specifies how documents and other listings are to be displayed in Greenstone
GB-encoding	Standard way of encoding the Chinese language
GDBM	Gnu DataBase Manager, a program used within the Greenstone software to store metadata for each document
GIMP	Gnu Image-Manipulation Program used (on Unix) to create icons in Greenstone
GML	Greenstone Markup Language, an XML-compliant format used for storing documents internally
Gnu license	Software license that permits users to copy and distribute computer programs freely, and modify them—so long as all modifications are made publicly available
Greenstone	The name of this digital library software
GSDL	Abbreviation for Greenstone Digital Library
%GSDLHOME%	Operating system variable that represents the top-level directory in which all Greenstone programs and collections are stored ($GSDLHOME on Unix systems)
%GSDLOS%	Operating system variable that represents the operating system currently being used ($GSDLOS on Unix systems)
hashfile	Greenstone program used at import or build time to generate the OID of each document
HTML	HyperText Markup Language, the language in which web documents are written
import.pl	Greenstone program used to import documents
Importing	Process of bringing collections of documents into the Greenstone system
Index	Information structure that is used for searching or browsing a collection
InstallShield	Windows program, used by Greenstone CD-ROMs, that allows a system to be installed from a CD-ROM
Main configuration file	File that contains specifications common to all collections served by this site
Metadata	Descriptive data such as author, title, date, keywords, and so on, that is associated with a document (or document collection)
MG	Managing Gigabytes, a program used by the Greenstone system for full-text indexing, that incorporates compression techniques (see Witten, I.H., Moffat, A. and Bell, T. Managing Gigabytes: compressing and indexing documents and images, Morgan Kaufmann, second edition, 1999)
mgbuild	MG program for building a compressed full-text index
mgquery	MG program for querying a compressed full-text index
mkcol.pl	Greenstone program that creates and initializes the directory structure for a new collection
New Zealand <br/>Digital Library Project	Research project in the Computer Science Department at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, that created the Greenstone software ( nzdl.org )
OID	Object Identifier, a unique identification code associated with a document
Perl	Programming language used for many of the text-processing operations that occur during the building process
Ping	Message sent to a system to determine whether it is running or not
Plugin	Code module for handling documents of different formats, used during the importing and building processes
Protocol	Set of conventions by which a Greenstone receptionist communicates with a collection server
Ranked query	Natural-language query to an information retrieval system, for which the documents that match the query are sorted in order of relevance
Receptionist	Program that organizes the Greenstone user interface
RTF	Rich Text Format, a standard format for interchange of text documents
Searching	Accessing a collection through a full-text search of its contents (or parts of contents, such as section titles)
Server	See Collection server and Web server
setup.bat, setup.sh, setup.csh	Script used to set up your environment to recognize the Greenstone software
Site configuration file	File that contains specifications used to configure the Greenstone software for the site on which it is installed
Stemming	Stripping endings off a query term to make it more general
STL	Standard template library, a widely-available library of C++ code developed by Silicon Graphics
txt2db	Greenstone program used at build time to create the GDBM database
Unicode	Standard scheme for representing the character sets used in the world's languages
UNU	The United Nations University; also used to refer to a Greenstone collection created for that organization
Web server	Standard program that computers use to make information accessible over the World Wide Web
XML	A standard format for structured documents and data on the web (the Greenstone Markup Language is an XML-compliant format)