Introduction
Digital libraries facilitate creation, organization and
management of multi-media digital content and collections and provide search, retrieval and other
information services over computer networks (e.g. Internet and intranets) and other electronic
media (e.g. CD-ROM). There is increasing interest among organizations to develop digital libraries
for a variety of purposes: improved management and access to internal publications; publishing and
providing global access to ones research work; improved preservation and access to cultural and
heritage documents and artifacts, and so on. It is possible today to create simple DLs using prevailing
Web and database technologies. However, it would take lot more effort to integrate functions such as
metadata, object search and retrieval, access management, and multiple document types. Further we
expect digital libraries to be robust, scale as collections grow and incorporate international standards.
Commercial solutions can be very expensive. Fortunately we are beginning to witness emergence of
open source (free) DL software. For developing countries such as Nepal, their free availability has
particular significance and relevance.
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. GSDL is an open source, available from
http://greenstone.org under the terms of the GNU General Public License, multilingual software suite
meant for building, managing, distributing, and provide access to digital collections.