Week 3 - Reading Notes

Witten, Bainbrdige & Boddie: Greenstone, Open-Source Digital Library Software

The New Zealand Digital Library project's Greenstone software has features which appeal to me. First, it has interfaces in many different languages, including Chinese. Second, it has user activity logs which record every query made to its collection. This could greatly assist in building a taxonomy for a site, to choose labels and to create an index or FAQ. Third, I was impressed by the fact that the U.N. freely distributed Greenstone via CD-ROM to developing countries.

Smith et al.: DSpace - An Open Source Dynamic Digital Repository

It seems that DSpace has some major advantages over Greenstone. First, DSpace employs more standards in its protocols, such as the DublinCore metadata standard and OAI-PMH, and thus seems more interoperable. Second, DSpace is able to accommodate a complicated workflow system in an organization, with different players performing different functions (submitter, reviewer, metadata editor, etc.)

Muddiest Point:  Does DSpace employ user activity logs, in order to capture user queries to refine its taxonomy and labels?

Biswas and Paul - An Evaluative Study - Special Reference to DSpace and Greenstone Digital Library

I really enjoyed the fact that this article pointed out some of the major features of DSpace, like its Lucene search engine, Handle system, and its employment of OAI-PMH. However, I was dismayed by the numerous misspellings which occurred in this article. I appreciated the fact that the authors pointed out one particular weakness of DSpace at that time: It lacks/lacked employment of the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard, METS.