Do Real Archivists Use OAI? Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Gettysburg, PA October 31, 2003 Chris Prom Assistant University Archivist University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Goals Examine rationale for archivists to use OAI Describe my involvement in the University of Illinois Mellon OAI project Speculate on OAI’s present and future Suggest how archivists may wish to get involved with OAI

Should Archivists Use OAI? OAI use growing, well-supported, (relatively) simple NSDL base format, NCSTRL project Allows metasearches across projects and data types (not content specific) DL projects for archives, manuscripts, photos, artifacts, objects use a variety of metadata standards Provides wider exposure for collections University of Michigan OAIster service illustrates both promise and problems

Why archivists should use OAI...

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NOT a link to NAACP visual materials finding aid

Found! ( mins later) 5,000+ items! (11 online)

UIUC Mellon Project Goals Test feasibility of harvesting, searching cultural heritage with OAI Develop data provider tools that produce usable OAI records from disparate sources (MARC, EAD, databases, etc) Build open-source service provider tools My role: EAD/OAI –assess structural problems in mapping to OAI –develop an effective crossmapping –allow basic searching in an OAI environment –test effectiveness of the search –provide proof of concept

Our approach “Dumbing down” metadata has benefits Examined EAD encoding standards Generated multiple OAI records for one EAD –top-level record drawn from and –mini records from, with relation to top level Preserve context for “hits” by linking user to finding aid in the search/retrieval mechanism relations between levels in the finding aid rendered implicitly by our service provider, not within the OAI record

Our Data and Service Providers OAI Repository (Data Provider) –Snapshot of ~5,500 EAD finding aids mirrored on UIUC server –responds to HTTP get and post with ASP scripts and XSLT stylesheet to provide requested data –Records produced from EAD include XPointer –When EADs are split into their subordinate components, Xpointers identify the individual parts Service Provider –Server-side scripts use the XPointers in DC identifier tag for rendering and linking –Xpointer used to move user deep in finding aid, preserve context

XPointer WC3 Recommendation, March 2003: Can identify XML fragments using a superset of the XPath syntax, e.g. xyz.xml#xpointer(//dsc[1]/c01[2]/c02[3]/c03[10]) When EADs are split into their subordinate components, Xpointers identify the individual parts To make it work, both data providers and service providers would need to share a set of assumptions about HOW it should work

Toensing, Richard text archives or manuscripts file Various Composers

Simple Search

Search Results

Full Record

Hit in Context of Finding Aid

What I learned Using OAI can exposure your collections to new audiences Not good enough to harvest from image databases, nor just give just top-level link to FA But many users confused when stumble on a finding aid; “where’s the beef” An “archives friendly” service provider would –... Serve as basis for cross-repository searches –... Reenginner the notion of what is a finding aid by allowing access from the back end –... Undo some of the damage inflicted when archival materials are treated as items –... need to reconstruct context using local mirrors of the ead document

The Future OAI Currently better suited to representing digital objects than descriptive data Service providers currently limited in number, 16 listed on openarchives.org Will OAI take off? IMLS Digital Collections and Content Project: (

Data Provider Options If you want to provide dynamic (full) OAI metadata –Metadata items in Relational database Map fields or pages to DC record Use webscripting language to respond to harvester requests –XML, e.g. Finding aid (as a digital object) map from and use encodinganalog recommendations from RLG Best Practices or pass entire EAD file with XSD schemaRLG Best Practices –metadata for digital objects linked from EAD??? use XSLT and XPointer to provide context and allow service providers to replicate hierarchical structure of EAD. Depends on SP’s ability to handle xpointer

Data Provider Options, cont. Static OAI metadata –Suitable for small collections which are not growing –All metadata should be contained in a single xml file on a webserver –Projects which will harvest metadata (e.g. IMLS Digital Collections and Content) may be able to provide assistance in conversion.

Resources OAI website: – UIUC Provider Tools – – Library Hi Tech, Vol 21, No. 2, special issue on OAI Further implementation guidelines – oai/JCDL_2003_OAI_Intro.ppthttp://dli.grainger.uiuc.edu/publications/twcole/jcdl- oai/JCDL_2003_OAI_Intro.ppt This powerpoint: –

Do Real Archivists Use OAI? Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Gettysburg, PA October 31, 2003 Chris Prom Assistant University Archivist University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign