The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Digital library software introduced

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 03, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Digital library software introduced

Staff Reporter

It has provision for multi-lingual interfaces and data entry

CHENNAI: "The advantage of digital libraries is that they provide access to and storage of multimedia and allow for cooperative input," said John B. Rose of the University of Waikato at the British Council here on Saturday.

He was introducing the Greenstone Digital Library Software, an open source, multi-platform software for digitising libraries, produced in the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

The lecture is part of an UNESCO-supported initiative to popularise the free software among Asian countries, beginning with India.

The software has provision for multi-lingual interfaces and data entry. Hindi and Kannada databases, not all of which have been put online, have been created by some of the Indian users.

The Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and the Archives of Indian Labour are among the institutions that have put the software to use.

Open source

Since it is open source, it can be customised for specific requirements, Mr. Rose pointed out.

An Indian Greenstone Support Organisation Advisory Group has been formed to set up an Indian website for download, email list for queries and organise the Asian Greenstone Regional Training Workshop in November in Kozhikode.

The Greenstone software is available at www.greenstone.org and the digital library of the University of Waikato at www.nzdl.org.

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