The Open Archives Initiative Marshall Breeding Director for

The Open Archives Initiative Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technologies and Research Vanderbilt University http: //staffweb. library. vanderbilt. edu/breeding Redefining Libraries: Web 2. 0 and other Challenges May 2007 Xiamen, China

From www. openarchives. org n n Standards for Repository Interoperability The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. OAI has its roots in the open access and institutional repository movements. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. Over time, however, the work of OAI has expanded to promote broad access to digital resources for e. Scholarship, e. Learning, and e. Science.

Model for federated search Harvest metadata from multiple repositories n Index metadata on a central service n Offer a search interface on the central service n Deliver access to digital objects on the original repositories n

Organization / Structure n Data Providers – Contribute metadata and content – Run a module that responds to requests for metadata n Service Providers – Harvest metadata from one or more repositories – Operate services that request metadata from data providers

Not Meta. Search Avoids pitfalls of “distributed-query” approach to federated search n Centralized, consolidated indexes allow for fast searching, sorting, ranking n Not dependent on persistent connections with multiple repositories n

Open Archives Initiative n n n Initiated in the pre-print servers for scholarly articles and research papers Need to provide federated search model rather than having each researcher search each repository separately Value-added services Santa Fe convention – Oct 1999 Need to develop a protocol to create interoperability among many different types of repositories, each with different types of documents and metadata

OAI-PMH n n n Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting XML protocol for harvesting metadata Uses unqualified Dublin Core as default Each community can specify its own metadata formats and profiles A simple protocol designed to have a low threshold of difficulty for implementation

OAI-PMH Requests / Response Identify n List. Identifiers n List. Metadata. Formats n List. Records n List. Sets n Get. Record n

A standard protocol Initial 1. 1 version in July 2001 n Version 2. 0 completed in June 2002 n

Operational considerations n n Initial contact of an OAI harvester to a repository may involve a massive transfer of records Resumption token provides a mechanism for the repository to interrupt the transfer – Harvestor may come back at a later time to resume the transfer n Subsequent requests involve only added and changed records

OAI in action n n Widely implemented Part of the standard infrastructure for preprint servers, institutional repositories, etc. – D-Space – Fedora n n Pragmatic approach for any application needing to transfer records between systems Some service providers use additional protocols

Examples Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations n The American South n – American. South. org

Implementations Tools available in many different programming languages and environments n Built-in to many digital library applications n

For detailed information: http: //www. openarchives. org/ n Understanding the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting of the Open Archives Initiative (Marshall Breeding, Computers in Libraries, Sept 2002) n http: //www. librarytechnology. org/ltgdisplaytext. pl? RC=9944 n