[OAI-implementers] points to ponder

[Evelyn Cristina Pinto]

> > > should i use a completely new vocabulary for random access to a
> > > repository/database/component or are words like "GetRecord" and
> > > "ListRecords" ok? 

I think that OAI-PHM is so good because itīs simple and his simplicity can
be reused in other contexts easily. The OAI-PMH protocol doesnīt define
a granularity standard of the objects that can be stored in the
repositories. 
So, we could use the OAI-PMH protocol for harvesting, for example,
a repository that just stores information about other archives. The verbs
are too general and thatīs the beauty of the protocol: itīs abstract!

We can find an interesting item definition on
http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/openarchivesprotocol.htm#Item :

"2.3 Item
An item is a  constituent of a repository from which metadata about a
resource can be disseminated. An item is conceptually a container that
stores or dynamically generates metadata about a single resource in
multiple formats, each of which can be harvested as records via the
OAI-PMH.  Each item has an identifier that is unique within the scope of
the repository of which it is a constituent. "

As you can realize, we canīt find a definition here that an item must
specify just information about e-prints, articles. I think that people who
wrote it, they took a lot of care to allow the users specify the
granularity of their item.

I think that the ListRecords, GetRecords verbs are great for a lot of
applications.

Regards,
Evelyn.

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Evelyn Cristina
Mastering Student and EPrints Webmaster at IME-USP, 
University of São Paulo 
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