Open Archives Initiative Primer

1
Open Archives Initiative Primer
Thomas Krichel Palmer School of Library and
Information Science Long Island University With
apologies to Carl Lagoze
DC2001 Tokyo, October 25, 2001
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Where I come from...

• Trained economist
• Early (1991) visionary of free online scholarship
  
• Creator of NetEc in 1993
• Principal founder of RePEc in 1997
• Largest distributed academic DL in the world
• Collection that is open for
• Contribution
• Usage
• Grown to over 100 archives, over 10 partly
  interoperable user services

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Metadata collection process

• Free online scholarship requires academic
  self-documentation
• Metadata is expensive to collect
• Building free metadata collection is difficult
• no established business model
• no established funding channels
• Only a collaborative effort will be succeed.

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The example of eprint servers

• attractive building block for the transformation
  of scholarly communication
• but isolated efforts do not make for a scholarly
  communication system
• need to federate archive
• need to interoperate with other scholarly
  communication components

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Example e-print accessibility
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Example e-print accessibility
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metadata harvesting
metadata
e-print
8
metadata harvesting
metadata
e-print
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other examples

• within the area of scholarly commuication
• already implemented in RePEc
• Sharing of log data between service providers
• Provision non-document data for document data
  provider
• personal data
• institutional data

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core concepts in OAI 1.1

• low-barrier interoperability

• data-provider / service-provider model

• metadata harvesting model

OAI 1.1 protocol
HTTP based

• shared metadata format

Dublin Core

• parallel metadata formats

Community specific
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harvester / repository
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OAI protocol requests
service provider
data provider

• Supporting protocol requests
• Identify
• ListMetadataFormats
• ListSets

• Harvesting protocol requests
• ListRecords
• ListIdentifiers
• GetRecord

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HTTP encoding - requests
BASE-URL -----------gt an.oa.org/OAI-scriptkeyword
arguments --gt verbListIdentiferssetS1
GET http//an.oa.org/OAI-script?verbListIdenti
ferssetS1
POST POST http//an.oa.org/OAI-script
HTTP/1.0 Content-Length 78 Content-Type
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
verbListIdentiferssetS1
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HTTP encoding - responses
ltxml version1.0 encodingUTF-8
?gtltGetRecord xmlnshttp//oai.namespace.uri
xmlnsxsihttp//w3.namespace.uri xsischemaL
ocationhttp//oai.namespace.uri http//oai.sc
hemaURLgt ltresponseDategt2000-19-01T193030-0400
lt/responseDategt ltrequestURLgthttp//an.oa.org/OAI-
script?verbGetRecord ampidentifieroai3Aar
Xiv3A0001 ampmetadataPrefixoai_dclt/request
URLgt ltrecordgt record contents lt/recordgt addi
tional recordslt/GetRecordgt
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record
ltrecordgt ltheadergt ltidentifiergtoaieg001lt/ident
ifiergt ltdatestampgt1999-01-01lt/datestampgt lt/head
ergt ltmetadatagt ltdc xmlnshttp//purl.org/dcgt
lttitlegtMy Examplelt/titlegt lt/dcgt lt/metadatagt
ltaboutgt ltea xmlnshttp//www.arXiv.org/ea
ltusagegtNo restrictionslt/usagegt lt/eagt lt/aboutgtlt
/recordgt
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selective harvesting - datestamps
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selective harvesting - sets
S2
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Communication re OAI

• lists subscribe via http//www.openarchives.org
• oai-general list
• oai-implementers list
• web http//www.openarchives.org
• FAQ http//www.openarchives.org/faq.htm
• mail openarchives_at_openarchives.org

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revision of specifications

• Currently frozen specifications for 12 -18
  months
• stable for experimentation not definitive
• minimize risk for early adopters
• maximize chances for future interoperability
  across communities

The technical committee are working on the
definitive specifications
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The technical committee

• - Herbert Van de Sompel (British Library) -
  Carl Lagoze (Cornell U) - Thomas Krichel
  (Long Island U RePEc) - Jeff Young (OCLC)
  - Tim Cole (U of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)
  - Hussein Suleman (Virginia Tech) - Simeon
  Warner (LANL arXiv) - Michael Nelson (NASA
  NACA) - Caroline Arms (Library of Congress) -
  Muhammad Zubair (Old Dominion U ARC) - Steven
  Bird (U Penn Open Language Archive Community)
  - Robert Tansley (MIT DSpace) - Andy Powell
  UK (UKOLN) - Mogens Sandfaer Denmark (DTV) -
  Thomas Severiens Germany - Thomas Baron
  Switserland (CERN) - Les Carr UK (U of
  Southampton) - Thomas Place Netherlands (Tilburg
  U)

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Current activities
Currently they are working on a list of
technical issues related to the protocol A new
specification is supposed to be drafted
2002-02 Alpha testing will start 2002-04 The
new specification will be released shortly after
that.
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Thank you for your attention!

• Thomas Krichel
• Palmer School of Library and Information Science
• 720 Northern Boulevard
• Brookville NY 11548-1300
• USA
• http//openlib.org/home/krichel