[OAI-implementers] OAI Resource

[Young,Jeff]

Venu,

Yes and no.

Yes in the sense that you could create sets hierarchies that look like this:
Subject:History:European:Middle+Ages
Name:Shakespeare,+William,--1564-1616
Title:A+is+for+Apple

No in the sense that no one will ever use your sets if you do this. Take the
"Name" hierarchy, for example. Even if someone did want to harvest only
those records written by William Shakespeare, they would still have to match
the set string exactly (i.e. "Name:Shakespeare,+William,--1564-1616") or no
records will result. If your setSpec has two dashes separating the name from
the date, one dash in the request won't cut it. The user doesn't know the
birth and death date? Sorry. The same goes for the "Title" hierarchy.

Your target audience might get some value from the "Subject" hierarchy, but
only if it's not too complicated. In general, I wouldn't create OAI sets
unless the folks harvesting it demanded them. Why make it hard on yourself
if nobody cares?

Other than a simple set of subjects, I only see two other sets that OAI
clients are likely to care about: Type:Projects and Type:Papers (or
something similar).

If you want your users to be able to do useful searches by title, subject,
or author, though, don't expect OAI sets to satisfy them. Find some other
way to give them this capability such as Z39.50 or SRU/SRW or EPrints or
DSpace.

Jeff


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Venugopal R Pally [mailto:pally_reddy@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 4:54 PM
> To: Young,Jeff; Simeon Warner; 
> oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> Subject: RE: [OAI-implementers] OAI Resource
> 
> 
> Jeff,
> Thank you for your responses. 
> Currently, the set hierarchy in our repository
> consists of different research SUBJECTS. So, Is it
> possible, I mean practical with respect to OAI, for me
> to include Paper titles, Authors also as OAI Sets (set
> hierarchy) along with research subjects ?
> Thanks,
> Venu.
> 
> 
> --- "Young,Jeff" <jyoung@oclc.org> wrote:
> > Venu,
> > 
> > I guess I misunderstood about making "titles" a
> > separate resource. After
> > re-reading your note, I see that you're referring to
> > storing information
> > about research papers in addition to research
> > projects. This would be a
> > perfectly reasonable thing to do. You could
> > differentiate the two by putting
> > them in separate sets. Pick and choose Dublin Core
> > elements according to the
> > qualities for each type. If Dublin Core cramps your
> > needs, you can always
> > support a richer alternative format such as MARC in
> > addition to DC. I think
> > my earlier comments regarding people still apply,
> > though.
> > 
> > Jeff
> 
> 
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