The document discusses the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). It describes OAI-PMH as a standard that allows data providers to make metadata available via HTTP so that service providers can harvest the metadata to develop value-added services. It provides details on the various requests and operations that are part of the OAI-PMH protocol. The document also discusses some implementation issues and examples of service providers that utilize OAI-PMH harvested metadata.

1. Open Archive Initiative – Protocol for metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) Surinder Kumar Technical Director NIC, New Delhi [email_address] , 011-24305503

2. OAI-PMH The mission of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) (www.openarchives.org) is to develop and promote “interoperability standards that aim to facilitate efficient dissemination of content.

3. OAI-PMH The OAI-PMH is based on a simple and powerful model “whereby repositories (data providers) make metadata . . . available via a well-defined protocol. The exposure of the metadata allows other organizations (service providers) to harvest it and then aggregate it, post-process it, and refine it with the goal of developing services that add value.

4. Background Has origins in ePrints (arXive, CogPrints), dating back to 1999 actively seeking wider applicability Nothing to do with OAIS Aims to “f acilitate the efficient dissemination of content” free access to the archives (at least: metadata) consistent interfaces for archives and service provider low barrier protocol / effortless implementation (e.g., because based on HTTP, XML, DC) Now on version 2.0 (June 2002)

5. OAI-PMH: what’s it all about Service providers harvest metadata from data providers. “ service” Adapted from http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/english/page3.htm OAI PMH Requests (HTTP) Metadata (XML) Data provider Metadata (+ resources) Harvester Service Provider Metadata

6. What can be requested (verb) Description of the archive (Identify) A list of metadata formats supported by the data provider (ListMetadataFormats) A list of sets provided (ListSets) A list of resource identifiers (ListIdentifiers) Many records (ListRecords) An individual record (GetRecord)

7. Example Requests http://archive.example.org/oaipmh?verb=Identify http:// archive.example.org/oaipmh?verb= ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

8. Metadata Formats Metadata may be returned in any XML format Dublin Core is mandatory OAI-PMH specifies the XML schema to use No single DC element is mandatory Other element sets / bindings are optional Qualified DC (e.g. RDN, NSDL) MODS (LoC) LOM (RDN-LTSN) ODRL (JORUM ( I think) ) ...

9. Sets A grouping of items made to allow selective harvesting E.g. all theses E.g. the Engineering section E.g. all resources from a given source Optional

10. List Records Harvester can ask for specific metadata format for All available items All items in a set All records modified in given date range (A single item — GetRecord) Data provider can return All relevant records Some relevant records + resumption token An error code (no such set / metadata format)

11. Static Repositories Even lighter-weight specification for data providers with small and relatively static collections E.g. the output from a conference Essentially an XML file available at a URL Accessed through a “static repository gateway” intermediary

12. Issues: complexity Providing data is easy Harvesting data is easy However Doing so may lead to complex workflow / policy issues What do you do with the harvested metadata? Do you modify the metadata you harvest? If so, do you feed this back to the provider? What if the provider changes a modified record? Does a service provider disseminate via OAI?

13. Issues: uptake Lots of implementers, who have produced lots of useful support However Relatively little commercial uptake Relatively little support for harvesting rich metadata Relatively little support/consensus on sets

14. Issues: Harvesting resource (e.g. Full text) Nothing in OAI-PMH requires that full-text should be available for harvesting. Resource may be physical or accessed controlled Nothing in OAI-PMH requires that information required for harvesting should be available. However in many cases OAI-PMH will provide the information required to harvest the resource. http:// www.myoai.co

15. Service Provider Arc: A Cross Archive Search Service http://arc.cs.odu.edu/ From October 2000 Arc is an experimental research service that serves as a platform for demonstrating the scalability of the OAI-PMH and as a vehicle for providing access to OAI-compliant repositories through a unified search interface. Arc is the oldest federated search service based on the OAI-PMH.

16. OAISTER OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources. We provide access to these digital resources by "harvesting" their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).

17. Service Providers Citebase http://citebase.eprints.org/ May 2001 Citebase “allows researchers to search across free, full-text research literature eprint archives, with results ranked according to many criteria (e.g., citation impact), and then to navigate that literature using citation links and analysis.”

18. Contd… SAIL-eprints (Search, Alert, Impact and Link) http://eprints.bo.cnr.it/ April 2003 SAIL-eprints (Search, Alert, Impact and Link) is “an electronic open access service provider for finding scientific or technical documents, published or unpublished, in Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Materials Sciences, Nanotechnologies, Microelectronics, Computer Sciences, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Earth Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography, . . . [Agriculture], and related . . . [subjects].”

19. Resources Open Archives Initiative http://www.openarchives.org/ Spec, best practice guide and useful resources, mailing lists OAI for beginners http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/ Online tutorial OAI Repository Explorer http://www.purl.org/NET/oai_explorer Web interface for issuing OAI-PMH requests

23. Thanks