I am pleased to announce to the Geonetwork-opensource community that Geonetwork-opensource
has long been selected as the most important GeoFOSS tool within the eContentplus GS Soil project,
http://www.gssoil.eu/, in particular within Work Package 5 "Open Tools and services", in which my
research institution (the Informatics Applications and Systems Group (ISAG) of the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki) is involved as a technical partner.
Briefly, the GS Soil project aims at creating an European Soil metadata portal, offering view services,
metadata searches, etc.
The portal itself can be found at: http://gssoil-portal.eu/ingrid-portal/
While the actual portal is not based on Geonetwork-opensource but on a proprietary platform called
InGrid (Information Grid), it was deemed necessary to provide individual data partners, in particular those
without a publishing infrastructure, with a free and open source alternative through which to publish their
metadata, their map data, and, for many of them, actually sort out their available data. As of now, nearly 40% of
the data partners involved in the project (people contributing soil metadata and soil-related map services) do
so through Geonetwork-opensource, after following the WP5-led research and consulting process.
Within the scope of the aforementioned WP5, an installation and management guide has been written, aimed
mostly at non tech-savvy data partners, as a kind of beginner's guide. However, the guide grew to include not
only step-by-step installation instructions (distinguishing between Windows and Linux users, as well as between
client/small server and full-scale server), but also troubleshooting tips, some installation tweaks that and a layout
customization guide that, to the best of my knowledge, are not available in any of the official Geonetwork-opensource
documentation.
During the latest GS Soil WP 5 meeting at Darmstadt, Germany, on 21.01.11, it was decided that the installation
guide, called D5.6: (GEO)FOSS installation and use guidelines, should be contributed back to the Geonetwork-opensource
community, as it may turn out useful in similar scenarios encountered by institutions and projects similar to our own.
As of now this guide is mostly an internal document, but when approved in its first post-draft form, it will
be made available in the GS Soil public deliverables area:
http://www.gssoil.eu/downloads/public-deliverables-.html
The contents of the document are considered pretty much fixed for now, but may exprerience further growth
as other, more usage related aspects are covered (e.g. metadata entry and INSPIRE compliancy) and after
-eventual- feedback from the community arrives.
For any questions and clarifications, I can be contacted at: vepitrop@anonymised.com
Yours Faithfully,
Epitropou Victor
Dipl. Electr. & C.Sc. Eng., Msc. student
Informatics Applications and Systems Group (ISAG)
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
54124 Thessaloniki
Greece
Tel/Fax: +30 2310 994176