Distributed Functionality in the UIUC OAI Registry http://gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry

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Distributed Functionality in the UIUC OAI
Registry http//gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry

• By Thomas G. Habing
• Grainger Engineering Library Information Center
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• thabing_at_uiuc.edu

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What is the Registry Quick Demo

• http//gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry
• Basic browse interface
• Detailed Record Views
• Repository Groupings
• Subject Classification
• Numerous reports

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Catalyst for the Registry

• Various OAI Related Projects at UIUC
• Mellon Funded Gateway to Cultural Heritage
  Material
• IMLS Digital Collections and Content
• NSDL Digital Mathematics Resources
• CIC OAI Metadata Harvesting Service
• OAI Portal to Engineering, Physics, and Computer
  Science

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How can it be used?

• Finding relevant OAI repositories to harvest,
  especially in selecting individual sets within a
  repository
• Other questions
• Which repositories are aggregating other
  repositories?
• How big are individual repositories?
• How to find new repositories as they come online?
• What is the state of the OAI world?
• Enable other meta services

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Distributed?

• The registry itself is not distributed
• Resides on a single web server
• Data resides in a single relational database
• However
• Takes advantage of other distributed services
• Has numerous features that allow it to be
  utilized by or for other distributed services

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Registered Repositories Drawn from Multiple
Distributed Sources

• Various other basic OAI registries
• http//celestial.eprints.org/cgi-bin/ListFriends.p
  l
• http//oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/Register/ListFriend
  s.pl
• http//www.openarchives.org/OAI/RejectedSites
• http//www.openarchives.org/Register/ListFriends.p
  l
• Google SOAP (allinurlverbIdentify)
• Friends (graph of friends)
• Provenance
• Plan to add web based registration of new
  repositories by their owners

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Regularly Receive Metadata Feeds From Distributed
Sources

• OAIster metadata and record counts
• Web based metadata update function
• UploadPropsForm.asp
• Upload a standard XML Collection Description
• Based on DC Collection Description
• Currently used internally
• May eventually open metadata upload to the owners
  of the repositories
• Should probably be more RESTful
• Exploring wiki-like editing of the metadata

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Making the Registry Useful to Other Distributed
Services

• Good old ListFriends
• OAI-PMH
• RSS (maybe ATOM in the future)
• SRU

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OAI-PMH

• http//gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/px/oai.asp
• Issue How to identify a record about an OAI
  repository?
• By BaseURL
• By OAI Identifier
• BOTH
• Identify, ListSets, ID, URL
• ERRoLs
• Developed by Jeff Young at OCLC
• "Cool URL" to metadata, content, and services
  related to registered OAI repositories

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RSS

• http//gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/rss.asp
• Mostly used as a notification service
• New repository added to registry
• Base URL of an existing repository has changed
• Some other data about the repository has changed
  in the registry
• Very basic RSS feed

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SRU

• http//gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/sru/sru.asp
  
• Started as an experment for the NISO Metasearch
  effort
• Sample Queries
• queryillinois
• querytitleillinoisrecordSchemazeerex
• queryidentifieruiuc
• querycql.anywhereall"chemistryphysics"

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Possible Future Work

• Explore ideas to make the registry itself
  distributed, such as utilizing the OCKHAM
  Registry Service or other emerging services
• Continue to use it as a testbed for exploring
  emerging ideas in digital libraries
• Registries in general
• Metasearch
• Collection Description
• Etc.

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Tech Details

• Windows 2000 Server
• Active Server Pages (ASP) running under the IIS
  web server
• SQL Server database w/ fulltext search
• Custom harvesting programs written in VB and
  VBScript

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Database
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Previous Paper

• Habing, Thomas G., Timothy W. Cole, and William
  H. Mischo. Developing a Technical Registry of
  OAI Data Providers, in Research and Advanced
  Technology for Digital Libraries, 8th European
  Conference, ECDL 2004, Bath, UK, September 2004,
  Proceedings, Rachel Heery and Liz Lyon
  (proceedings editors), Lecture Notes in Computer
  Science 3232. Berlin, Springer-Verlag, pp.
  400-410.
• http//gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/thabing_ecd
  l2004.pdf