The University of Waikato, New Zealand, has appointed Prof Stefan Rueger of KMi as Honorary Professor in their Department of Computer Science for a five year period from June 2009. This award recognises the ties and collaborations that Stefan has built with Waikato’s Digital Libraries Research group over the last six years.

The principal research output of world-renowned Digital Libraries Research group is called Greenstone, which is an open source, multilingual digital library toolkit. Used out of the box it provides the ability to create collections of digital content, to display the content in a web browser and to access and search the collections that have been built. It runs on all major platforms including the iPod. Various UN agencies use it to provide self-contained fully searchable CD-ROMS on humanitarian aid to developing countries. Greenstone’s user base hails from over 80 countries. It is downloaded 200 times/day, and is fully documented in English, French, Spanish, and Russian. In addition, its web interface has been translated into 55 languages by enthusiastic volunteers across the globe.

Stefan and members of his Multimedia and Information Systems team visited the Greenstone project several times over the last six years during stays of up to 4 months, while he hosted key Greenstone team members at his previous lab in Imperial College London and at KMi. The collaboration with the Greenstone group aims to co-develop tools for multimedia digital libraries that automate the process of indexing video, images and audio and help browsing and searching for content in a meaningful way while keeping the full digital library functionality.