Greenstone tutorial exercise

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Sample files: dspace.zip
Devised for Greenstone version: 2.60
Modified for Greenstone version: 2.70w

Moving a collection from DSpace to Greenstone

  1. First, change to Library Systems Specialist (or Expert) mode (using FilePreferences...), because you will need to change the order of plug-ins in the Design panel.

  1. Start a new collection called StoneD and fill out its fields appropriately. Leave the metadata set at Dublin Core, the default.

  1. Switch to the Design panel and select the Document Plugins section on the left-hand side. Remove ZIPPlug, TEXTPlug, HTMLPlug, EMAILPlug, PSPlug, ImagePlug, ISISPlug and NULPlug. Strictly speaking we do not need to remove these, however it reduces clutter.

  1. Now add DSpacePlug. Leave the plugin options at their defaults and press <OK>.

  1. Using the up arrow, move the position of DSpacePlug to the top of the list (above GAPlug).

  1. In the Gather panel, locate the folder sample_files → dspace. It contains five example items exported from a DSpace institutional repository. Copy them into your collection by dragging them over to the right-hand side of the panel.

  1. Build the collection and preview it to see the basic defaults exhibited by a DSpace collection.

If you browse by Titles A-Z, you will find 7 documents listed, though only 5 items were exported from DSpace. Two of the original items had alternative forms in their directory folder. The DSpace plug-in options control what happens in such situations: the default is to treat them as separate Greenstone documents.

Below we use a plug-in option (first_inorder_ext) to fuse the alternative forms together. This option has the effect of treating documents with the same filename but different extensions as a single entity within a collection. One of the files is viewed as the primary document—it is indexed, and metadata is extracted from it if possible—while the others are handled as "associated files."

The first_inorder_ext option takes as its argument a list of file extensions (separated by commas): the first one in the list that matches becomes the primary document.

  1. Select DSpacePlug and click <Configure Plugin...>. Switch on its configuration option first_inorder_ext. Set its value to "pdf,doc,rtf" in the popup window that appears and press <OK>.

  1. Build and preview the collection.

There are now only 5 documents, because only one version of each document has been included—the primary version.

Adding indexing and browsing capabilities to match DSpace's

The DSpace exported files contain Dublin Core metadata for title and author (amongst other things).

  1. In the Design panel, select Search Indexes. Delete the ex.Title and ex.Source indexes, and add one for dc.Title called "titles" and another for dc.Contributor called "authors".

  1. Staying within the Design panel, select Browsing Classifiers and delete both AZList classifiers (ex.Title and ex.Source). Add an AZList classifier for dc.Title and an AZCompactList classifier for dc.Contributor.

  1. Now select the Format Features section of the Design panel, and select the VList format statement in the list of assigned format statements. Add the following text before the final </td>:

    {If}{[ex.equivlink],<br>Also available as:[ex.equivlink]}

    Click <Replace Format>.

  1. Also, let's add a format statement for the classifier based on dc.Contributor metadata. In the Choose Feature menu (under Format Features on the Design panel), select the item that says:

    CL2: AZCompactList -metadata dc.Contributor

  1. Leave VList as the Affected Component and edit the text in the HTML Format String box. Replace

    {Or}{[dls.Title],[dc.Title],[ex.Title],Untitled}

    with

    {If}{[numleafdocs],([numleafdocs]) [ex.Title],[dc.Title]}

    and click <Add Format>. This will display the number of documents for each bookshelf in the Contributors classifier.

  1. Build collection once again and preview it.

There are still only 5 documents, but against some of the entries appears the line "Also available as:" followed by icons that link to the alternative representations.