[OAI-implementers] Reconsidering mandatory DC in OAI-PMH

[Jewel Ward]

At 03:49 PM 8/4/2003 -0400, Carl Lagoze wrote:

>1. Change the Dublin Core requirement to a recommendation.
>2. Leave oai_dc as a reserved metadataPrefix
>3. Move the oai_dc part of protocol document to Implementation
>Guidelines
>
>We invite members of this list to contribute their thoughts on this.

I'm not going to provide feedback on the proposal :-) but will instead 
self-promote ;-) and re-provide a link to my master's thesis results, which 
are relevant to this discussion. For my thesis, I analyzed usage of the 
unqualified DC Element Set in OAI-PMH DPs.  I sent the results out and a 
link to the full thesis to the OAI-General mailing list last December 2002.

A 3-page summary of the thesis is available via: 
http://csdl.computer.org/comp/proceedings/jcdl/2003/1939/00/19390315abs.htm. 
Or, you can read the full results starting from page 25 at: 
http://www.foar.net/research/mp/Jewel_Ward-MPaper-November2002.pdf.

Also available on my web site is the raw data I used, as well as multiple 
charts, graphs, etc.  Go to: http://www.foar.net/research/index.html and 
click on the link "Master's Paper", then the link "All Figures and Tables".

Partial Abstract:
...

This research describes an empirical study of how the Dublin Core Metadata 
Element Set (DCMES) is used by 100 Data Providers (DPs) registered with the 
Open Archives Initiative (OAI).  The research was conducted to determine 
whether or not the DCMES is used to its full capabilities.

Eighty-two of 100 DPs have metadata records available for analysis.  DCMES 
usage varies by type of DP.  The average number of Dublin Core elements per 
record is eight, with an average of 91,785 Dublin Core elements used per 
DP.  Five of the 15 elements of the DCMES are used 71% of the time.  The 
results show the DCMES is not used to its fullest extent within DPs 
registered with OAI.

Regards,

Jewel

--
Jewel H. Ward
Graduate Research Assistant, Post-master's
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Research Library
(505) 664-0368
jewelw@lanl.gov