Robyn Ward

Networking 846
Solutions Paper #2

The First Unitarian Church of Portland established in 1866 has a rich collection of

information regarding Unitarian and Portland history. The Church has a liberal tradition of

involvement concerning social justice in the Portland area. The collections of the Church are

located in their downtown building held in their library and archives. The Church currently has a

web presence but would like to make both their library and archival collections available to not

only their members but to a broader public as well. Ministers and congregants have contributed

significantly to intellectual output and research. Sermons, addresses, correspondence, and

lectures represent a significant part of this intellectual output. With the advent of the Web, more

and more of this intellectual output have been born digitally and been made available on their

website. It is the intent of the Church to be able to manage these current digital assets and past

collections in a digital Institutional Repository.

The collection includes minister/church publications, historical photographs, books and

manuscripts, video and audio recordings and three-dimensional objects. A main focus for the

Church archives is the preservation and access of these materials. Key factors that were

considered when looking at the software options for the Institutional Repository were: 1) Digital

preservation of materials for future use (including maintenance, storage, migration, and disaster

recovery), 2) Access to content (which includes digitization, descriptive metadata and search

interfaces), and 3) Inexpensive software that is easy to setup and maintain.

For the Institutional Repository two open-source software options were considered:

DSpace and Greenstone. Both systems were developed to make it easy for organizations to build

their own digital libraries. Greenstone was developed by the New Zealand Digital Library
Project at the University of Waikato and is distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the

Human Info NGO. Hewlett-Packard Labs developed DSpace as a noncommercial product for

MIT libraries. DSpace is used for building institutional repositories for research institutions and

is good at capturing, storing, indexing, preserving and redistributing digital research materials.

Both are highly flexible and customizable and address a number of different needs. In a very

basic comparison, Greenstone supports individual collections composed of different types of

documents and metadata representing static collections. DSpace on the other hand, supports

institutions in capturing and disseminating the intellectual output of an institution and then

preserves that output forever. The table below represents a feature comparison of DSpace and

Greenstone.

Feature DSpace Greenstone

URL http://www.dspace.org http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-

bin/library

Platforms Unix and Mac OS/X Runs on Windows computers,

Unix, and Mac OS/X

Interoperability Is OAI-PMH compliant and Complete Interoperability - uses

defines metadata standards
based on Dublin Core for
interoperability
current standards. It has the
ability to interact with two or
more systems/metadata
schemes. It can export and
import data over OAI-PMH

Scripting Language Java C++, Perl, Java

Language English 35 different languages (Five

core languages: English,
French, Spanish, Russian and
Kazakh)

Technical Support Designed for institutional use Designed to be used by anyone

where computing facilities and with basic computer-literacy
competent software/network skills. Provides online support.
 support is already in place.
Does provide a
listserv/discussion list.
Preservation Designed for long-term
preservation; it stores
preservation metadata and
includes a scheme
Metadata Standards Imposes a single metadata
standard (Dublin Core), but
recent versions allow users to
define their own metadata
formats by using XML input
forms
Document Formats Plug-ins for PDF, XML,
HTML, RTF, Plain Text, Excel,
PPT. Also supports text, audio,
video and images
User Base Institutions (Colleges and
Universities)
Interface Provides a generic design that
can be customized but not by
end-users
Systems Apache Web server, Tomcat
Servlet engine and Postgre
SQL relational database
Licensing BSD License
Browsing and Searching Easy to use
Is not explicitly designed for
long-term preservation
Dublin Core but also allows for
authors to use own metadata
scheme
Plug-ins for PDF, XML,
HTML, RTF, Plain Text, Excel,
PPT. Also supports text, audio,
video and images
Institutions, organizations and
libraries in 70 different
countries
Two interactive interfaces: One
for users (Reader Interface) that
operate within a web browser
and a librarian interface that is
Java-based graphical interface
that is easy for download from
the web. The Interface an be
designed, customized, and built
by end-users
Apache Web server, C++
complier and MySQL database,
Perl
GNU General Public License
Easy to use
Cost Only in Time (downloading, Only in Time (downloading,
installing, maintaining, installing, maintaining, training)
training)

It was difficult to decide which product would best benefit the archive. Both have

comparable features. DSpace would be a good choice because of the long-term preservation

functionalities but Greenstone was ultimately chosen for the following reasons. It best fit the

small environment of the Church archives and library because of it ease of installation and

maintenance. The Church does not offer a platform that will support DSpace. The current

collection focus for the archives was to provide digital access to existing collections. The static

nature of Greenstone was not a drawback at this point. Greenstone meets the second

consideration for digital access of collections. During the research for this analysis an article that

discussed bringing Greenstone and DSpace together was considered. It offered a solution for

bridging the two systems through easy migration from one to the other or to continue with a

combination of both. This is something to keep an eye on for development within the archives

and can possibly address the long-term preservation question.

References
Dahl, M., Banerjee, K., Spalti, M. (2006). Digital libraries: Integrating content and systems.

Oxford, England: Chandos Publishing.

Sing, S. N., Ngurtinkhuma, R. K., & Singh, P. K. (2007). Open source software: A comparative

study of Greenstone and DSpace. Retrieved October 23, 2007 from

http://dspace.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/1944/517

Witten, I. H., Bainbridge, D., Tansley, R., Huang, C., & Don, K. J. (September 2005). StoneD: A

bridge between Greenstone and DSpace. D-Lib Magazine, 11 (9). Retrieved October 23,

2007 from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/witten/09witten.html