1. a centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk RDN, e-Prints UK and NOF- Digitise: a (very) small sample of UK OAI activity Andy Powell a.powell@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN, University of Bath THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL JISC/CNI CONFERENCE June 2002

2. 2 About the RDN Resource Discovery Network (RDN) co-operative network of subject gateways –BIOME (health, medicine and life sciences) –EEVL (engineering, maths and computing) –HUMBUL (humanities) –PSIgate (physical sciences) –SOSIG (social science, business and law) databases of descriptions of high quality Internet resources… and other services 50,000+ records in total funded by JISC for UK HE and FE

3. 3 About the RDN subject-focused communities –cataloguers (subject specialists) –end-users (community-oriented collaborative services) individual Web interfaces but shared policy framework –collection development –cataloguing guidelines –technical standards and interoperability –IPR DC metadata (with some extensions)

4. Searching… using Z39.50 central cross-searching service based on Z39.50 but... –performance issues –difficult to build flexible browse interface so... looking for a record sharing solution RDN ResourceFinder EEVL BIOME HUMBUL PSIgate SOSIG 4

5. Sharing… using OAI gather records using OAI central database of all RDN records using Cheshire software basis for central search, browse interface and other services (e.g. Web index) RDN ResourceFinder EEVL BIOME HUMBUL PSIgate SOSIG 5

6. Sharing… and searching central database of all RDN records available for searching using Z39.50 e.g. offered as part of the Renardus European subject gateway pilot service RDN ResourceFinder EEVL BIOME HUMBUL PSIgate SOSIG Renardus cross-search Z39.50 OAI 6

7. 7 Implementation implementation not tied to particular subject gateway software repository built from two Perl scripts... –first provides record conversion from gateway format to OAI XML format –second supports the OAI protocol very simple repository –records stored in UNIX filestore as XML files –sub-directories for each OAI ‘set’ gatherer based on Southampton’s Perl modules - Perl scripts freely available

8. 8 Issues - record richness default unqualified DC record format in OAI is broadly in line with RDN records but... does not support full richness of RDN records, e.g. –can not indicate the subject classification scheme in use need to investigate whether specific RDN record format is required

9. 9 Issues - branding need to indicate ownership of records need to brand records appropriately in central search/browse results can use the OAI section as follows: –dc:creator - the name of the cataloguer (author of the record) –dc:publisher - the name of the gateway that originally made the record available –dc:rights - a simple rights statement about the record

10. 10 Issues - how open? RDN records not freely available to anyone open protocol/standard but ‘closed’ service can use standard HTTP authentication methods to restrict access –IP address checking –HTTP basic authentication (username and password) –SSL

11. 11 Conclusions OAI protocol met a requirement already identified by the RDN to move from searching to sharing repository code deployed at all RDN gateways gatherer running centrally – importing records into Cheshire database now need to: –investigate requirements for richer record format

12. 12 e-Prints UK 2 year project funded by JISC access to eprints via existing RDN services harvesting metadata from OAI-compliant eprint archives in the UK (and elsewhere) automatically enhanced metadata records based on Web services offered by –OCLC (name authority and subject classification) –University of Southampton (citation analysis, OpCit)

13. 13 e-Prints UK architecture e-Prints UK RDN gateway/portal service RDN gateway/portal service RDN gateway/portal service Subject classification service Name authority service Citation analysis service Institutional e-print archives Personal e-print archives OAI-PMH SOAP Non-institutional e-print archives SOAP Javascript/HTTP Z39.50 Web services offered by OCLC Web service offered by Southampton e-print archives end-user services thru the RDN

14. 14 NOF-Digitise Programme programme of 149 ‘digitisation’ projects funded by New Opportunities Fund, £50M, 2001 - 2004 creation of innovative on-line learning resources three broad themes; cultural enrichment, citizenship, and re-skilling can expect 1,000,000 items digitised during life of programme

15. 15 NOF-Digitise and OAI considering use of OAI-PMH to create single point of search across all projects......and to expose NOF-digitise outputs to other OAI service providers not likely to be mandatory but some interest by projects in use of OAI-PMH already

16. 16 Open Archives Forum European Union IST accompanying measure partners: –Humboldt University, Berlin –IEI-CNR, Pisa –UKOLN, University of Bath started autumn 2001

17. 17 project objectives provide focus for dissemination encourage collaborative development of software support European liaison with OAI exchange information evaluate ‘open archives’ approach … build community of interest

18. 18 further information OA-Forum Web site UKOLN OA-Forum Web site for more info, contact Leona Carpenter oa-forum@ukoln.ac.uk

19. a centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk