[OAI-implementers] Beginner questions

[Tim Brody]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Powell" <a.powell@ukoln.ac.uk>
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Tim Brody wrote:
>
> > DC.identifier = "http://www.myrepos.com/item/10"
> > DC.identifier = "oai:myrepos:unique10" (i.e. you could also include the
> > OAI identifier in the metadata)
>
> I tend to to disagree with this.  The OAI identifier is *not* an
> identifier of the resource being described - it is an identifier of the
> OAI item - therefore it shouldn't be repeated in the DC description.

At the risk of being pedantic :-)

This is referring to the oai-identifier scheme, rather than the more general
OAI identifier (unique within a repository and a URI).

"An item is conceptually a container that stores or dynamically generates
metadata about a single resource in multiple formats", so it follows that
the identifier for the OAI item uniquely identifies the resource, which
fulfills the DC definition:
"An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given [OAI] context."

What is not defined is how to resolve an oai-identifier to the resource, but
DC doesn't require that.

All the best,
Tim.