Connector Corner: Accelerate revenue generation using UiPath API-centric busi...
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Digitisation and institutional repositories 3
1. Open Archive Initiative â Protocol for metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) Surinder Kumar Technical Director NIC, New Delhi [email_address] , 011-24305503
 1st Meeting of the OAI  October 21-22 1999, Santa Fe, New Mexico D-Lib article in Feb 2000: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february00/vandesompel-oai/02vandesompel-oai.html
The service provider will use a âharvesterâ to issue OAI requests in order to collect metadata from a data providerâs repository. Example services: Anything you can do with metadata. Cross search: aggregate resource discovery metadata from many repositories (BUT OAI-PMH is not a search protocol per se ). Metadata enhancement/transformation: merge records, augment metadata (e.g. add implicit information about encoding schemes), change binding. (Diane Hillman et al âImproving metadata quality : recombination and augmentationâ (NSDL) http://metamanagement.comm.nsdl.org/Metadata_Augmentation--DC2004.html
Will focus on those which are highlighted.
These are examples using HTTP GET, also possible to use POST
By insisting the simple DC is used the OAI aims to provide a base level of interoperability.
Selective harvesting is not the same as searching, sets have to be pre-defined by the data provider. You canât assume that an OAI data provider will provide sets.
OAI is not a query protocol.
STARGATE (CDLR at Strathclyde university) http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/stargate/ is investigating use of OAI static repositories
None of the issues are insurmountable if youâre not over-ambitious to start with and think through potential problems. NSDL metadata recombination work is an example.
Commercial uptake: in work with a scientific publisher (Inderscience) through JISC PALS project, have found that CSA, CrossRef, Elsevier etc. have refused to use OAI-PMH preferring their own harvesting techniques. In part perhaps due to not understanding how flexible OAI can be (e.g can support any metadata) In part because can do this simply without OAI-PMH (e.g. web crawling) In part reflects balance of power between service provider and (small) data provider (DP has to play by SP rules; DP has to support many harvesting specs, SP get to control what they use) PERX project have produced âMarketing with metadataâ aimed at encouraging publishers to use metadata interoperability standards including OAI-PMH Support for rich metadata reflects variety and lack of consensus for rich metadata
Location: no metadata element is mandatory, therefore canât rely on identifier/location being available. However if youâre dealing with resource discovery metadata for resources available online, it normally is.