[OAI-implementers] OAI Resource (fwd)
Rosemary Russell
lisrr@ukoln.ac.uk
Tue, 15 Apr 2003 13:27:08 +0100 (BST)
Since I'm not a list member, a colleague copied me the email below
discussing metadata for people... I recently completed a review of
metadata schemas for describing people, for the UK PORTAL project, which
is available from:
http://www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/deliverables.html
It includes vCard (as mentioned by Caroline below) amongst others.
Rosemary
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 17:31:25 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Caroline Arms <caar@loc.gov>
> To: 'Venugopal R Pally' <pally_reddy@yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Young,Jeff" <jyoung@oclc.org>, Simeon Warner <simeon@cs.cornell.edu>,
> oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> Subject: RE: [OAI-implementers] OAI Resource
>
>
> Venu,
>
> I agree with the earlier respondents. OAI-PMH is a mechanism for
> exchanging (but not searching) metadata. If your local application needs
> to hold and support searching for information about people, that is likely
> to be outside OAI-PMH entirely. However, if you are also looking to
> exchange metadata about people among applications/services, you may be
> able to use OAI-PMH.
>
> Useful metadata about people (whether you call them authors, agents,
> parties, or whatever) is going to be different from useful metadata about
> document-like information resources. Even though the DCMI now says that,
> 'Here an information resource is defined to be "anything that has
> identity".' the original elements (used for the OAI mandatory set) were
> definitely developed for "document-like" objects. Squeezing information
> about people into an unqualified Dublin Core record is unlikely to be
> useful.
>
> As Jeff points out, since OAI-PMH allows you to use other metadata
> formats, you can use it to exchange records that describe people if the
> parties involved in the exchange can agree on a format. The mandatory DC
> record can be minimal, its only useful purpose being as a conduit to a
> "full" record in a more appropriate schema.
>
> Apart from MARC Name Authority Records in the marc21 "slim" schema, I am
> not familiar with an XML Schema in common use for describing people. I
> just found
> http://www.numerata.com/vcardschema.htm
> but vCard may not have the elements that are of interest in your
> application.
>
> There are at least two more activities that I can think of that are
> looking into records for people. However, neither has reached the stage
> of having a schema, as far as I know.
>
> 1. DCMI Agents Working Group
> http://www.dublincore.org/groups/agents/
> "Agents" include Creator/Contributor (and possibly Publisher) from the
> primary DC Element Set.
>
> 2. InterParty
> http://www.interparty.org/
> The InterParty project is funded under the European Commission's
> Information Society Technologies Programme (IST), to design and specify a
> network to support interoperability of party identification (for both
> natural and corporate names) across different domains. InterParty builds
> on the work of the <indecs> project, one of whose deliverables was a
> specification for a Directory of Parties
> [http://www.indecs.org/pdf/DirectoryofParties.pdf]. InterParty is not
> proposed as a replacement for existing schemes for the identification of
> participants in the intellectual property domain (e.g. national library
> name authority files or systems oriented towards the needs of rights
> licensing) but as a means of effecting their interoperation.
> http://www.interparty.org/
>
> If you really are looking to exchange records about people, perhaps others
> on the mailing list know of projects involving appropriate schemas or
> element sets.
>
> Caroline Arms caar@loc.gov
> Office of Strategic Initiatives
> Library of Congress
> ==
> Opinions expressed are my own.
> ==
>
>
> On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Young,Jeff wrote:
>
> > I don't see how titles deserve to be separate resources, but I can
> > sympathize with your desire to store authors as resources. For example, I
> > have an old copy of the LC Name Authority File available that is accessible
> > via OAI GetRecord verbs (e.g.
> > http://alcme.oclc.org/laf/servlet/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=m
> > arcxml&identifier=oai:laf.oclc.org/LCCN/n78-95332). So, you can retrieve any
> > record in the file by substituting the LCCN for that person at the end of
> > the URL.
> >
> > The biggest problem with this from OAI's point of view is that you can't
> > honestly represent these records in Dublin Core (e.g.
> > http://alcme.oclc.org/laf/servlet/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=o
> > ai_dc&identifier=oai:laf.oclc.org/LCCN/n78-95332). Is "William Shakespeare"
> > the dc.creator? The dc.title? Dublin Core is a bibliographic metadata
> > format, and people just aren't bibliographic items. On the other hand, I
> > don't claim that this repository is OAI compliant. It's just a convenient
> > way to make the MARC21 XML data available to both browsers and automated
> > processes.
> >
> > If you're really intent on creating records for people, you might consider
> > doing something similar. Then, in your research records, you can create
> > links from the dc.creator/dc.contributor/dc.publisher, etc, to these records
> > via the available URL.
> >
> > This brings up another problem, though. There is no place in the Dublin Core
> > schema to put these URLs. For example,
> >
> > <dc:creator>Shakespeare, William,--1564-1616</dc:creator>
> >
> > To get around this, the ETDMS format, for example, extends the Dublin Core
> > schema to include a resource attribute.
> >
> > <etdms:creator resource="http://...">Shakespeare, William...</etdms:creator>
> >
> > If you store your research project records this way, you can always dumb
> > them down to Dublin Core by omitting the URL.
> >
> > If you do decide to store records for people, I'd suggest that there's no
> > good reason to mix them in with your research paper records. Also keep in
> > mind that various groups are dealing with schemes that will associate people
> > with URIs, so in the long term, you may want to pick a solution that will
> > allow you to utilize these services when they become available.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Venugopal R Pally [mailto:pally_reddy@yahoo.com]
> > > Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 2:35 PM
> > > To: Simeon Warner; oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> > > Subject: RE: [OAI-implementers] OAI Resource
> > >
> > >
> > > Thank you. As you said, Could you inform me how I can
> > > provide this at the service layer ? I have already
> > > implemented the OAI considering these research
> > > projects as Resources. But it would be of good use to
> > > my organization if I can extend it to considering
> > > certain other things as Resources. My initial idea was
> > > to use the same oai_dc metadataformat as schema for
> > > all these resources except that I will use only some
> > > of those elements in metadata of these different
> > > resources. For example, I need creator element of
> > > oai_dc for project but I dont need that element for
> > > Author etc. This way I would omit certain elements for
> > > these resources. Please suggest me if this is
> > > practical.
> > > Thanks,
> > > Venu.
> > >
> > > --- Simeon Warner <simeon@cs.cornell.edu> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I agree with Jeff and feel that overloading the
> > > > selective harvesting
> > > > mechanisms (sets, metadata formats) with search
> > > > functionality is not the
> > > > best way to approach these issues. You should either
> > > > use a protocol that
> > > > supports remote search, or provide that
> > > > functionality at the service layer
> > > > (think of the OAI repository as one layer down).
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > Simeon.
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Young,Jeff wrote:
> > > > > I'd say the answer is no, you don't want to do
> > > > that. OAI isn't a search
> > > > > protocol, it's a simple harvesting protocol. If
> > > > you really do need to search
> > > > > your database by these fields you will need to use
> > > > a different protocol such
> > > > > a Z39.50 or SRU/SRW and use it to index those
> > > > fields from your research
> > > > > project records. Also keep in mind that the main
> > > > reason people make your
> > > > > metadata records available via OAI is so others
> > > > (aka service providers) can
> > > > > make them useful and searchable in this way.
> > > > >
> > > > > Basically, it sounds like you want more
> > > > functionality than OAI alone
> > > > > provides. Check out EPrints or DSpace if you need
> > > > a more complete archiving
> > > > > solution.
> > > > >
> > > > > Jeff
> > > > >
> > > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > > From: Venugopal R Pally
> > > > [mailto:pally_reddy@yahoo.com]
> > > > > > Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 11:50 AM
> > > > > > To: oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> > > > > > Subject: [OAI-implementers] OAI Resource
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hi all,
> > > > > > The OAI says that 'resource' is the object or
> > > > stuff
> > > > > > that metadata is about. So, can resources
> > > > include
> > > > > > multiple types ? For example, in our case, I
> > > > > > identified research projects as resources. But
> > > > later I
> > > > > > found that harvestors would like to search our
> > > > archive
> > > > > > based on certain other things like Author, his
> > > > Papers
> > > > > > etc. This would mean I should consider Authors,
> > > > Paper
> > > > > > titles also as resources along with research
> > > > projects.
> > > > > > So, when a harvestor asks for ListIdentifiers,
> > > > can I
> > > > > > display all of these (Research Projects,
> > > > Authors,
> > > > > > Paper Titles) ? Or should I use different
> > > > > > metadataPrefix for different resources ?
> > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > > Venu.
> > > > > >
>
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Rosemary Russell
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY
Tel: +44 20 8318 5576
r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk http://www.ukoln.ac.uk