NSDL & the Open Archives Initiative A Brief Introduction to OAI Timothy W. Cole Mathematics Librarian & Professor of Library Administration University of Illinois at NSDL All Projects Meeting Washington, D.C. 14 October

2 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC Session outline Presenters Naomi Dushay, Cornell University Stephen P Sarapata, ENC / The Ohio State University John Weatherley, Univ. Corp. for Atmospheric Research General Discussion General questions & comments Sharing experiences with OAI

3 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC The Open Archives Initiative Harvesting approach to interoperability at metadata level Divides world into Metadata Providers & Service Providers Builds on HTTP, XML, & Dublin Core

4 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC OAI – PMH: How it works OAI “VERBS” Identify ListMetadataFormats ListSets ListIdentifiers ListRecords GetRecord HARVESTERHARVESTER REPOSITORYREPOSITORY OAI Service Provider Metadata Provider HTTP Request HTTP Response (OAI Verb) (Valid XML) OAI

5 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC A few protocol details OAI Transaction: An OAI request (HTTP Post/Get) & the corresponding OAI response (XML via HTTP) Optional: use resumptionToken & other flow control mechanisms to manage service load An OAI item is the metadata about a resource; An OAI record is an item expressed in a particular format Item Identifiers – Persistence & Uniqueness Identifiers must follow rules for valid URIs Record Datestamps – Date of last metadata record change; supports selective harvesting

6 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC Examples of OAI requests verb=ListMetadataFormats verb=ListIdentifiers&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&from= verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc& identifier=oai%3Aacl.sr.language-archives.org%3AA

7 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC An OAI Response T19:20:30Z

8 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC An OAI Record oai:arXiv:cs/ cs Using Structural Metadata… … ….

9 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC Users Collections Metadata repository The vision Services The metadata repository is a resource for service providers. It holds information about every collection and item known to the NSDL. From “The NSDL Metadata Strategy,” A presentation by William Y. Arms and Diane I. Hillman. Available:

10 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC 2.0 Specification & Related Guidelines OAI-PMH specification (2.0) OAI-PMH implementation guidelines OAI-PMH Frequently Asked Questions Implementation guidelines for static repository (Beta release) [New Guidelines for expressing IP rights & usage limits in OAI in work.]

11 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC NSDL Metadata & OAI Resources NSDL Metadata Primer NSDL FAQs on OAI, XML, & Encoding NSDL OAI and metadata validation checks

12 The Open Archives Initiative & NSDL 14 October 2003 University of Illinois at UC Other Resources Online OAI tutorials: OAI for Beginners, the Open Archives Forum online tutorial (UKOLN) Presented at JCDL 2003 pre-conference (5/27/2003) Presented at ALA 2002, LITA OSS4LIB pre-conference (6/14/2002) OAI tools & downloadable software: OAI-PMH Repository Explorer Lists of downloadable OAI tools & utilities XML validation tools & Unicode tools