Mancora

Mancora is a oceanside village a 4 hour bus ride from Piura. Very annoying surfers stop here on their way to up to Ecuador. I escaped Piura for the weekend with two of Margie's fabulous volunteers. It was only my second stay in a hostel, and I was blessing my dearest Jessica for lending me her silk sleeping bag. We bunked with a very pink Scottish guy named Tim. The poor thing fell asleep in the sun the day before and could barely walk. I found it hard to relate to the backpackers and surfers. They work seem to work very hard at impressing each other. The criteria is usually things like who's gone the longest without a shower, who's mellower, who rejects materialism more... it's a tough sell, I know how much a Patagonia costs.

Executive Summary - Greenstone
The Queens County Heritage Society (QCHS) contacted the Chief Librarian of the Prince Edward Island (PEI) Provincial Library for assistance in creating a digital library of the local history of Queens County. QCHS has amassed a rich collection from local residents who wish to present the collection in a digital library form. The PEI Provincial Library will host the collection on their web server and oversee the implementation, provided a solution with a “minimal cost” is found.

The documents are located in personal archives in a multitude of libraries on island. QCHS envisions a physical archive program in the future, but without funding, they must request assistance from public institutions. The project’s first obstacle is cost: the cost of acquiring and of implementing a digital library solution. Second, collaboration in the building of the collection is critical. However, logistical problems are present because documents are in various locations of Queen’s County. Lastly, there are several technical issues, such as the computer skills of library staff, the multimedia qualities of the collections and most importantly, parts of Prince Edward Island are currently not serviced by Internet Service Providers (ISP). These factors will present challenges to capturing and loading the documents and any solution must address all obstacles.
Greenstone offers a potential solution to the dilemma of QCHS Memory Project. Greenstone is an open source product available via Sourceforge; it allows multiple users to create collections remotely and the software developers added protections to avoid canceling the work completed in other library branches. Greenstone is, uniquely suited to capture cultural artifacts as seen in the Vimercate Public Library in Milan, Italy (Vimercate Public Library, 2006). These features make Greenstone a strong possibility but, due to several technical issues such as training and instability in new releases, the software is not recommended for the QCHS Memory Project.