The New Zealand Digital Library project is a research programme at The University of Waikato whose aim is to develop the underlying technology for digital libraries and make it available publicly so that others can use it to create their own collections.

Our web site provides several document collections, including historical documents, humanitarian and development information, computer science technical reports and bibliographies, literary works, and magazines. All are available over the Web, and can be accessed through searching and browsing interfaces provided by the Greenstone digital library software. Behind the query interface lies a huge collection providing gigabytes of information. We hope you find what you want, or at least something intriguing! The Greenstone software

The Greenstone Digital Library software provides a new way of organizing information and making it available over the Internet or on CD-ROM. It is open-source software, available under the terms of the Gnu public license.

A digital library is made up of a set of collections. Each collection of information comprises several (typically several thousand, or even several million) documents, which share a uniform searching and browsing interface. Collections can be organized in many different ways while retaining a strong family resemblance.

To subscribe to the Greenstone mailing list, go to https://list.scms.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/greenstone-users.

More... Our research

The goal of our research program is to explore the potential of internet-based digital libraries. Our vision is to develop systems that automatically impose structure on anarchic, uncatalogued, distributed repositories of information, thereby providing information consumers with effective tools to locate what they need and to peruse it conveniently and comfortably.

Project members are actively working on techniques for creating, managing, and and mainatining collections; extracting metadata from legacy documents; analysing library usage and user needs; Maori, Arabic and Chinese language systems; internationalising the library interface; optical music recognition and musical collections; novel interfaces for formulating queries and visualising results; novel interfaces for browsing metadata; text mining for keyphrases, acronyms, and other metadata; keyphrase extraction and phrase-based browsing; and other research topics.

More... Our affiliates

Human Info NGO is a registered charity responsible for the provision of universal low-cost information access through co-operation between UN Agencies, universities and NGOs. Human Info NGO collaborates extensively with the NZDL project, and use the Greenstone software.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The dissemination of educational, scientific and cultural information throughout the world, and particularly its availability

Kia papapounamu te moana

kia hora te marino,
kia tere te karohirohi,
kia papapounamu te moana

may peace and calmness surround you,
may you reside in the warmth of a summer's haze,
may the ocean of your travels be as smooth as the polished greenstone.

Greenstone is a semi-precious stone that (like this software) is sourced in New Zealand. In traditional Maori society it was the most highly prized and sought after of all substances. It can absorb and hold wairua, which is a spirit or life force, and is endowed with traditional virtues that make it an appropriate emblem for a public-domain digital library project. Its lustre shows charity; its translucence, honesty; its toughness, courage; and the sharp edge it can take, justice. The carved piece used in the Greenstone Digital Library Software logo is a patu or fighting club, and is a family heirloom of one of our project members. In hand-to-hand combat its delivery is very quick, very accurate, and very complete. We like to think these qualities also apply to our software, the razor sharp edge of the patu symbolizing the leading edge of technology.

Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source software, available from http://greenstone.org under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

The aim of the software is to empower users, particularly in universities, libraries, and other public service institutions, to build their own digital libraries. Digital libraries are radically reforming how information is disseminated and acquired in UNESCO's partner communities and institutions in the fields of education, science and culture around the world, and particularly in developing countries. We hope that this software will encourage the effective deployment of digital libraries to share information and place it in the public domain.

This software is developed and distributed as an international cooperative effort established in August 2000 among three parties.

New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato Greenstone software grew out of this project, and this initiative has been endorsed by the Communication Sub-Commission of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO as part of New Zealand's contribution to UNESCO's programme.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization The dissemination of educational, scientific and cultural information throughout the world, and particularly its availability in developing countries, is central to UNESCO's goals as pursued within its intergovernmental Information for All Programme, and appropriate, accessible information and communication technology is seen as an important tool in this context.
The Human Info NGO, based in Antwerp, Belgium This project works with UN agencies and other NGOs, and has established a worldwide reputation for digitizing documentation of interest to human development and making it widely available, free of charge to developing nations and on a cost-recovery basis to others.

Greenstone Digital Library Software

New Zealand Digital Library Project
Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, New Zealand