Salam,
Well..It is almost 2 years now i'm working on a digital library for malay manuscipts or pustaka digital manuskrip melayu using an open source software called greenstone. Its a software that build using Perl and macro language (for version 2.82 and below) by New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato. At first i was shocked because i have never learn Perl Programming at school and the codes is totally different compared with java. As i don't have much choices during that time, i decided to learn and do some research on greenstone. Alhamdulillah, all documentations provided by greenstone helps me understand better on how the greenstone works. Moreover, they have a maling list that i subscibed, so that i can ask questions about developing a digital library using greenstone while helping others with their problems.
With help from friends here at fcsit at University of Malaya i managed to finish it. There are some features that i have embed within MyManuskrip (as my prof ask me too). Functions like "quick search", view statistics, register and auto calculate total records is hardly to do especially when you are using open source ("not your own codes"). Overall, for me greenstone is definitely one of the best digital library or institutional repository or whatever you call it in market right now.
Features of Greenstone :-
1) Easy Step by step Installation Guidelines.
2) 3 Choiceses of searching engine (Lucene, MG & MG++).
3) Easy to manipulate/alter the interface.
4) Able to create your own new metadata sets.
5) Easy to understand the process of building records and customization.
6) Almost all common plugins available.
7) You don't have to compile/build/export/restart when you change the code, just refresh the page.
--MyMaova--
The word MyMaova stands for 'Malaysian Modern Archive of Visual Art'. This is also the example of digital library developed using greenstone. This is a final year project (for masters) of my friend, shahnim safian. It tooks almost 3 months of hardwork to complete the system. As you can see, the interface can be manipulate to best suit your needs and creativity.
-Summary-
There you go!! As far as i'm concern there are 2 or 3 organizations in Malaysia already used greenstone for their digital library. But, i'm not going to tell you who. hehe.. So, if you're interested of developing a digital library using greenstone, gd lk and all the best. Let me know if you need a help..chow..
