Current developments and future trends for the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

ABSTRACT

The lay open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) has been widely adopted since its initial release in 2001 Initially disentangleed as a means to federate access to diverse e-print archives from one side metadata harvesting and aggregation, the protocol has demonstrated its potential usefulness to a broad range of communities. sum of two units years out from the release of the stable production version of the protocol (20) there are many interesting disclosures within the OAI community. Communities of interest have begun to use the protocol to aggregate metadata relative to their exigencys The development of a registry of OAI data providers with browsing and searching capabilities as well as accessibility to machine processing is helping to provide a scalable solution to the question of who is providing what via the OAI protocol. Work is progressing upon the technical infrastructure for extending the OAI protocol beyond the traditional harvesting form However, serious challenges, particularly for service providers, still exist. This article provides an overview of the popular OAI environment and speculates upon future directions for the protocol and OAI community.

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The lay open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) has been widely adopted since its initial release in 2001 Initially evolveed as a means to federate access to diverse e-print archives from one side metadata harvesting (Lagoze & Van de Sompel 2003) the protocol has demonstrated its potential usefulness to a broad range of communities. According to the Experimental OAI Registry at the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) (Experimental OAI Registry at UIUC, nd) there are generally over 300 active data providers using the production version (20) of the protocol from a wide variety of domains and institution stamps Developers of both open source and commercial contented management systems (such as D-Space and CONTENTdm) are including OAI data provider services as part of their proceedss Service providers range from large-scale efforts with a wide aim such as the National Science Digital Library (nd) to small, tightly focused, community-specific services, of that kind as the Sheet Music Consortium (nd)

This article provides a brief overview of the OAI environment, sum of two units years out from the release of the production version of the protocol. We assume a relatively high horizontal of familiarity with how the protocol works and solitary give a brief overview. We dig into some of the interesting disentanglements within the OAI world, particularly the use of the protocol within specific communities of interest, the disclosure of a comprehensive registry of OAI data providers, and a resolver for OAI identifiers that reach outs the protocol beyond its traditional use. We also document more [i]or[/i] less of the current challenges for the two data and service providers. We extreme point the article by noting a certain quantity of of the possible future directions for the OAI protocol and community.

popular DEVELOPMENTS IN OAI WORK

The mission of the unclose Archives Initiative, the entity responsible for the protocol, is to "develop and advance interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content" (Open Archives Initiative, nd a). The Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, a tool unraveled through the OAI, facilitates interoperability between disparate and diverse collections of metadata end a relatively simple protocol based upon common standards (XML, HTTP, and Dublin Core). The OAI world is divided into data providers or repositories, which traditionally make their metadata available [i]or[/i] part of to the other the protocol, and service providers or harvesters, who completely or selectively harvest metadata from data providers, again from one side the use of the protocol (Lagoze & Van de Sompel 2001) The OAI protocol requires that data providers make bare metadata in at least unqualified Dublin Core; however, the use of other metadata schemas is possible and encouraged. The protocol can provide access to parts of the "invisible Web" that are not easily accessible to search engines (such as resources within databases) (Sherman & Price, 2003) and can provide ways for communities of interest to aggregate resources from geographically diffuse collections. The protocol furthers a structure in which data providers can focus upon building collections and content, and service providers can focus upon building services for these collections and contented While the protocol itself says nothing about what happens to metadata one time harvested, usually service providers aggregate, index, and build search/retrieval and other value-added services around the harvested metadata. It has been sum of two units years now since the production version of the protocol was introduced (Lagoze, Van de Sompel Nelson & Warner, 2002a). Below we discuss just a certain quantity of of the current trends and disentanglements within the OAI community.

Community- and Domain-Specific OAI Services