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

[Young,Jeff]

I think people are being too hasty in their dismissal of DC.

Jose Borbinha writes:

> I full agree with this direction!
> We, at the National Library of Portugal (BN), are an example of that
> case! We have been using OAI-PMH for several purposes, and 
> we'd like to
> expand that usage, as for example for the transport of 
> UNIMARC Authority
> records (which have no straight mapping to the DCMES).

I would argue that we can maintain the DC "requirement" even for formats
that don't have a straight mapping to Dublin Core by having it describe the
primary metadata record rather than the resource itself. 

Here is an example of a subject thesaurus where the primary metadata formats
(MARCXML and Z39.19) don't map directly to Dublin Core. Note that the DC
record describes the Z39.19 record rather than the term itself.

Z39.19 record:
http://alcme.oclc.org/gsafd/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=z39_19&
identifier=Adventure+fiction

oai_dc record:
http://alcme.oclc.org/gsafd/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&
identifier=Adventure+fiction

Here is an example from the OpenURL registry which contains XML Schemas
(among other things) which also don't map directly to Dublin Core. Here, the
DC record describes the XSD record.

XSD record:
http://alcme.oclc.org/openurl/servlet/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPref
ix=xsd&identifier=ori:fmt:xml:xsd:book

oai_dc record:
http://alcme.oclc.org/openurl/servlet/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPref
ix=oai_dc&identifier=ori:fmt:xml:xsd:book

Jeff