EClass and Digital Library Support
In addition to the development of learning modules, there is commonly a need for projects to maintain a series of reference documents that are full-text searchable and categorized appropriately. Typically, these are refered to as digital libraries. While the concept is somewhat new overall, several organizations have used open source projects such as Greenstone, or even custom-built their own solution. What many people don't know is that EClass contains much of the functionality needed to implement a digital library.
Let's look briefly at the digital library creation process, from a technical perspective:
- Once content is gathered, it is input into the system and a full-text index is created of the information
- Metadata for documents is stored and made searchable as well
- Documents are categorized and structured into hierarchies
- A searching and browsing "interface" is created, and finally
- The end product is distributed via CD-ROM or Internet.
Inputting and Managing Content
EClass allows you to import files of most any type into EClass, including common formats such as HTML, DOC and PDF. You can then use your EClass' table of contents to structure documents into categories and sub-categories, much as one does with digital libraries. And if you import the same file multiple times (say, in different categories), it will only keep one copy of the document, thereby not wasting space.
Also, while some people don't realize it, EClass does support file metadata. There is a "Page Properties" dialog that shows the current metadata for the page that was imported. This metadata support is still simple, but could be easily and quickly expanded if people are taking advantage of this feature.
Indexing Documents
EClass comes with SWISH-E installed, which creates a full-text index of documents, including PDF and DOC files. (And soon, other major Office formats like PPT and XLS as well.) SWISH-E indexes and searches documents fast. You can also install and configure Greenstone to work with EClass, but it is not included by default because it is a large package. Both engines perform well with large amounts of documents, although Greenstone probably performs better when you get in the range of hundreds of thousands of documents. However, it should be noted that indexing that much content with any software will take considerable amounts of time, particularly because the index must be re-created each and every time a change to the library is made.
Note that the choice of whether to use SWISH-E or Greenstone depends upon your needs. SWISH-E is faster, easier to set up (it comes pre-configured with EClass) and is more compatible across platforms, but does not support Unicode, meaning that languages like Russian or Japanese will not be properly indexed. Greenstone, however, supports Unicode but at the expense of being less compatible across platforms, and harder to setup configure with EClass.
Distributing Libraries via CD-ROM or Internet
Both methods (SWISH-E or Greenstone) support the distribution of libraries via CD-ROM and Internet. The method used with SWISH-E is more compatible with various versions of Windows, but the Greenstone CD package can be made to work this way too.
Why EClass instead of ...?
The benefits that EClass has above and beyond other approaches is in its easy-to-use interface and support for extensibility with technologies such as Themes and plugins. Any content format could be added and indexed, so long as EClass was taught to understand it. One can alter the EClass' visual appearance by simply editing a template file, and the template file can even be extended to include new macros specific to certain projects. While other projects have some or all of this functionality, in EClass it is very simple to implement and use.
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