Posted: April 10th, 2015

Report about building access to the Greenstone Digital Library

Report about building access to the Greenstone Digital Library

Order Description

Assessment criteria
Demonstrate use of the software to design and build access to a collection and assess the outcome to make informed recommendations.
Before submission, review your assignment against each marking rubric
Word count (as appropriate)    ‘Building access’  2000 words (+/- 10%) ‘Enhancing access’ 1000 words (+/- 10%)      The word count excludes the title page, contents page and the reference list.  Do not use footnotes. Use Appendices for additional material, such as screenshots in the Product
Other instructions / guidance on size    The following ‘papers’ comprise part of the assignment ‘portfolio’
Building access to a collection        30% of the unit marks
Enhancing access                 20% of the unit marks
Overlong submissions    Tutors will mark only from the beginning to the specified length.
Feedback plan      Marks and feedback will be provided via email. Feedback on the rubric and individual comments will enable students to gauge the depth of their investigation and report as required to meet an academic and professional standard. Feedback on the product will be summative and formative in enabling students to understand the degree to which they can apply knowledge acquired on the course and beyond that which is presented in the course material. The feedback will help students understand their level of attainment and gain an appreciation of their ability to develop their project work in future employment
Support arrangements    The first paper ‘ Building access to a collection’ relates to the work using the Greenstone Digital Library Software to build access to a collection.  The second paper ‘enhancing access’ is based on the sessions on a critical assessment of the interface to the collection and its development
Marks     Marks shall be subject to internal and external moderation and   verification before final confirmation by the relevant assessment board.

Assignment Brief

!!!Building access to a collection – paper
The first paper ‘ Building access to a collection’ relates to the work covered in Spring term, namely using the Greenstone Digital Library Software to build access to a collection.
You should use the ‘Greenstone Digital Library Software’ .  This software derives from the New Zealand Digital Library project http://nzdl.org/  to ‘empower users, particularly in universities, libraries and other public service institutions, to build their own digital libraries/ archives/ repositories. Greenstone contains standard components to handle documents from the import to interface stage of building the library. It is capable of processing most file types and is part of the Open Archives Initiative for metadata handling which aids interoperability with other digital library repositories.
Building a collection with Greenstone involves 5 steps, these are:-
Gather:    To import a set of data into the database
Enrich:    To improve upon the metadata brought across with the data
Design:    To improve the search capability
Create:    To build the collection
Format:   To improve the user interface
Whilst due attention should be given to each component your aim is to focus on the design stage in Greenstone.  The learning objective is to develop the knowledge and skills in applying index and search technology to provide access to a collection (on any scale). In other words, you should be aware of all issues from collection gathering, digitisation to copyright to policy to standards, but also that you will not be able to adequately address these within the scope of the assignment. You should, however, give attention to the organisation of the information to make possible search and browse. Related issues in search need to be resolved, such as indexing, relevance ranking (if any), Boolean searching (if any), case sensitivity, phrase searching, stemming, pattern matching and related issues to the browsing information structures and results display and paging.
Your system is a demonstration of the software and thus can be considered to be an early stage of a development: it is entirely appropriate to note that many features remain an aspiration rather than a practicable proposition. You are expected to explain your design decisions, demonstrating knowledge of search and browse features and their suitability for the target domain and expected users.  You have free rein on the collection but you do need to ensure you have enough items to demonstrate the working system(about 20-30). !!! !!!Notice!!!You are not building anything; I have just left this bit for you to understand much better what is this all about!!!

Enhancing access – Paper
The second paper ‘enhancing collection’ is based on your critical assessment of your digital library and assessment of its room for development and/or additional functionality. Identify what has not been provided for and which you think might enhance the functionality of this library.
This analysis will depend on the collection, its potential users as well as your understanding of interface design and development and the techniques and technologies for possible enhanced access to information collections. You should focus on the possible enhancements that may be made with respect either to
the techniques for visual or browsing information structures at the interface
or
the use of linked data
In your paper explain the enhanced functionality and/or usability offered by the technology or technique, why you would recommend the enhancement for the specific collection / interface and suggest how you might assess the impact of the recommendation,

Hand in
A report  ‘ Building access to a collection’ on the steps taken to design the search and browse features in Greenstone as appropriate to meeting the needs of a user specification.  In essence you are providing a description of the system configuration. 2000 word count (+/- 10%)
Provide screen shots to demonstrate that all the features of the DL are fully functional.Marking
The paper ‘enhancing access ’  should be concise and to the point in its coverage and explanations.  It is worth 20% of the unit marks and the word count is 1000 words

Assessment criteria
Marks will be awarded for evidence of your working knowledge of the Greenstone system as an integrated digital library package
The system should be appropriately configured to (searchable indexes and browsing facilities should suit) the users’ needs and support them in searching and locating relevant information in the collection.
Care taken to verify that the DL is working well
Use should be made of the terminology and models of search and access as well as the functions to enrich the collection
Overall your work will be evaluated in terms of comprehensiveness (did you include the important and appropriate features of the software?), clarity (did you explain the design and build) and the overall quality in the presentation and style.
Provide references to books and articles that have informed your working knowledge.
The assessment of the library and your ideas for its enhancement might come from your own analysis of search systems known to you and/or from the literature.

The enhancing paper should draw on published literature and illustrate knowledge of the issues, the application of tools/techniques and analysis of outcomes to the goal of enhancing access.

The paper will be assessed on content, the depth of the investigation, and on the clarity, coherence of written description and explanations.

You may find you wish to use a bibliography if you do not actually cite in the paper but wish to show your reading in researching this paper.