4.1: The Gather View

This section introduces the Gather area that you use to select what files to include in the collection you are building. The Librarian Interface starts with the Gather view. To return to this view later, click the "Gather" tab directly below the menu bar.

The two large areas titled "Workspace" and "Collection" are used to move files into your collection. They contain "file trees" that represent files and folders.

Select an item in the tree by clicking it. (There are other ways; see below.) Double-click a folder, or single-click the switch symbol beside it, to expand (or collapse) its contents. Double-click a file (or right-click and select "Open in external program") to open it using its associated application program (see File Associations).

The Workspace file tree shows the sources of data available to the Librarian Interface -- the local file system (including disk and CD-ROM drives), the contents of existing Greenstone collections, and the cache of downloaded files. You can copy and view these files but you cannot move, delete, or edit them, with the exception of the downloaded files, which can be deleted. Navigate this space to find the files you want to include in the collection.

The Collection file tree represents the contents of the collection so far. Initially, it is empty.

You can resize the spaces by mousing over the grey bar that separates the trees (the shape of the pointer changes) and dragging.

At the bottom of the window is a status area that shows the progress of actions involving files (copying, moving and deleting). These can take some time to complete. The "Stop" button stops any action that is currently in progress.

Two large buttons occupy the lower right corner of the screen. "New Folder", with a picture of a folder, creates new folders (see Creating Folders). "Delete", with a garbage can, removes files. Clicking the Delete button will remove any selected files from the Collection file tree. Alternatively, files can be deleted by dragging them onto the Delete button.

To select several sequential items, select the first and then hold down [Shift] and click on the last -- the selection will encompass all intervening items. Select non-sequential files by holding down [Ctrl] while clicking. Use these two methods together to select groups of non-adjacent items.