Greenstone

This past few weeks my time seems to have dominated by Greenstone. Unfortunately not the gorgeous New Zealand stone that is often carved into wonderful Maori symbols, but a piece of open source digital library building software.

We were tasked with digitising about 30 analogue items, cassettes, LPs, written items, photographs etc., then using Greenstone we were to put together a library of the items in a way that made sense to the user.

All items were to contain metadata that could the be used to search or browse the library.

I did most of the main digitisation at home, since much of it was SSRG stuff like bout programmes and posters. I had video, and even bought a VHS copy of rollerball to add some clips.

I found building the library relatively easy, and finished it before anyone else - then spent the whole time stressing that I'd done the wrong thing, or hadn't done enough as some people were finding the whole thing really difficult.

Anyway, it's done now and handed in along with an essay about copyright and an initial proposal for my dissertation.

On to the next, an essay about archives and web 2.0 - how exciting!?