Recently we were approached by a client seeking to move online information from their legacy Paradox 4.0 database. Greenstone would enable the information to be web-accessible but we first needed to convert the database into a form that Greenstone can handle.

Digging on the internet revealed conversion software called Paradox dBase Reader, which is able to read DBF/DB files in Paradox format (but also supports other formats, such as dBase, FoxBase, Foxpro, Visual Foxpro and Visual DBase). This software allows the conversion of Paradox databases into HTML, Text (CSV), Excel, or XML formats.  We converted the database into XML, our preferred machine-readable format. Paradox dBase Reader was also able to extract images, stored internally as binary data, from the client’s database.

A plugin was then created to import the extracted XML and images into a Greenstone collection.  Greenstone’s modular nature made this change straightforward. The finishing touches will be to customize and brand the collection to the client’s specifications and then make it available on the client’s intranet.

This is an example of a Paradox database being converted into Greenstone but many other database formats can have new life breathed into them by having Greenstone serve them up on the web.

On September 19th 2008 Digital Library Consulting will be presenting a paper at the First Workshop on Very Large Digital Libraries in Aarhus, Denmark (in conjunction with the 12th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technologies on Digital Libraries).

http://www.delos.info/vldl2008