1. OAIster != Google Kat Hagedorn University of Michigan Libraries October 26, 2007

2. Outline Buzzwords Brief history/overview of OAI Why OAIster was created OAIster: digital union catalog Integration Is Google next-gen?

3. Buzzwords Next-gen, um, anything Lib2.0/Web2.0 Z39.50/SRU, OAI, RSS… Bottom line: user accesses material where they typically find things

4. Expectations OAI was developed to make it easier (not exhaustive) to create a place “where they typically find things” And to find things they typically can’t find elsewhere OAIster was designed to be the place

5. What is OAI? OAI stands for Open Archives Initiative “…develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.” Probably should have been called SAI: Shared Archives Initiative Includes a Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), i.e., what we use to fill OAIster Consists of data providers and service providers

6. Metadata records Data providers use protocol to share their metadata records Service providers harvest the metadata so they can provide a service using them Metadata needs to be XML1.1 compliant UTF-8 enabled Sufficient for discovery

7. OAI: what it is not OAI ≠ open access “…defining and promoting machine interfaces that facilitate the availability of content from a variety of providers. Openness does not mean ‘free’ or ‘unlimited’ access to the information repositories that conform to the OAI-PMH.” However, a large majority of OAIster records are available to all and sundry Perfect opportunity-- freely sharing free stuff

8. Why OAIster? Initially, wanted to build the Academic HotBot (now we would say the Academic Google) Essentially, a union catalog of digital objects that are not easily roboted or spidered Currently, have more records that link to “objects” than there are records in our OPAC: 13+ million

9. What does OAIster contain? Pre-prints, post-prints, published articles, grey literature, scanned images, archival videos… Harvest everything available except obvious test repositories Keep nearly everything must have a valid digital object link must have decent metadata must be scholarly or informational

11. http://memory.loc.gov/mbrs/varsmp/0526.mpg Library of Congress Digitized Historical Collections http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ADM0370.0002.001 University of Michigan Digital Collections

12. Why do (should) people use it? It’s big-- will pass 14 million shortly It’s varied-- besides articles, photos, and videos, it contains datasets, audio files, finding aids, manuscripts… It keeps growing-- as long as they keep paying my salary

13. Integration: to date SRU Level 0 keyword access in federated search engines connector for ExLibris MetaLib anything else that uses SRU Yahoo and Google included in search indexes… …poorly currently, without use of metadata OpenURL, currently a hack

14. Integration: future RSS subject or specific search link from results page alerts on new repositories Sakaibrary / Blackboard Facebook searching app…but useful? Zotero (Refworks / Endnote) APIs to…?

15. What purpose, integration? Google as example… Can’t get at everything, until it starts using OAI itself Gray literature and other scholarly materials in index Push metadata so ranks high in index

16. Google != OAIster Does it matter if Google is next-gen? It’s more like only-gen Should we all either conform to Google look-and-feel? or insinuate ourselves everywhere? even though integration is a catch-up game

17. Questions? Kat Hagedorn University of Michigan Libraries Digital Library Production Service www.oaister.org khage@umich.edu