[OAI-implementers] Sets in and subjects in OAI-PMH

[Sarah L. Shreeves]

Re:set descriptions, take a look at the Dublin Core Collection Description 
Application Profile which does include an element for 'logo'.

See: http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/

Sarah Shreeves
UIUC

At 02:02 PM 10/22/2003 -0400, Caroline Arms wrote:

>Steve,
>
>I'm not sure if it was clear from my message, that the white paper I
>pointed to was a discussion paper written 2 years ago to begin discussions
>on the degree to which version 2 of the protocol should formalize or guide
>the use of sets.  The issues at the bottom were discussed and what you see
>in the current protocol is what came out of those discussion.  What was
>implemented in version 2 was the ability to use any XML Schema for set
>description.  This would allow communities to establish their own
>practices.  And XML Schemas developed for one community might be adopted
>in others.
>
>I can see reason for wanting branding at the set level, but I have been
>more interested in getting rich set descriptions out there to see if
>harvesters found them useful [the answer from the harvesters I care about
>has been "yes"].  I used Dublin Core because it was there.  If someone
>else wanted to create a schema that added a branding element, I would use
>it.  It's not clear to me that my repository branding icon is actually
>being used anywhere, and so this hasn't been top of my priority list.
>
>  Caroline Arms                                       caar@loc.gov
>  Library of Congress
>
>
>
>On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Steve Sarapata wrote:
>
> > ENC uses sets. After reviewing the white paper below I think expanding
> > ListSets may solve quite a few problems. One issue I need to deal with
> > is recognition of partners and funding agencies through a logo, or icon.
> > I assign a <setSpec> value in the header which the NSDL folks in turn
> > look up and display. For my purposes a tag in ListSets such as <setLogo>
> > or <setBrand> may provide more standardization, flexibility and utility
> > across the OAI community.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Caroline Arms [mailto:caar@loc.gov]
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 9:53 AM
> > To: Hussein Suleman
> > Cc: oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> > Subject: Re: [OAI-implementers] Sets in and subjects in OAI-PMH
> >
> > On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Hussein Suleman wrote:
> > >
> > > p.s. is LCSH international? is it used in South Africa? Ethiopia?
> > >
> >
> > No. LCSH is not international.  It is used in many places, but the
> > policies and practices do not include an attempt to serve international
> > needs (to judge from discussions of the problem issues that required
> > policy decisions, when I had a detail to the part of LC that maintains
> > LCSH).  LCSH is also enormous.  I remember an analysis in the fairly
> > early
> > days of OAI by Old Dominion that implied that LC didn't use controlled
> > vocabulary in its subject terms in OAI records, because of the number of
> > distinct terms in our records.
> >
> > Back to sets in OAI.
> >
> > I agree that discussion about what is useful for harvesters is valuable.
> > If there is good evidence that certain practices for sets work for
> > certain categories of service providers, data providers who care
> > about whether or how their stuff appears in those particular services
> > may take steps to use sets that aren't related to internal processes or
> > organization.  Absent any such evidence, you can hardly blame them for
> > doing what is easy.  And for many, there are no resources to do
> > anything more than a simple technical transformation from internal
> > records.
> >
> > For what it's worth, the issue of how early implementer were using sets
> > was looked at in the technical discussions that led to the development
> > of
> > version 2 of OAI-PMH.
> >
> > "Out of 49 repositories, 39 are using sets. Of these 13 appear to
> > partition their collection by subject area, 13 by genre, and 9 by source
> > of records."
> >
> > See the table at the end of
> > http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/oai/collection-description/wh
> > itepaper.html
> > for more detail.  [Thanks to Andy Powell for being a pack-rat and still
> > having the file at the URL I found by mining my e-mail!]
> >
> > It's not clear that anyone was using sets to provide fine-grained
> > subject
> > breakdowns (which some repositories now are).  There may be communities
> > of
> > interest where that is useful and feasible, but in the cultural heritage
> > area (personal papers, digitized, manuscripts, photographs, museum
> > artifacts, etc.) there is plenty of evidence that agreement on "topical"
> > terminology and rules for application across heterogeneous domains is
> > neither feasible, nor indeed helpful.
> >
> > For the content in the LCOA1 repository, LC has more interest in
> > creating
> > sets that are useful for Kat Hagedorn (OAIster) and Sara Shreeves (UIUC)
> > and other service providers that focus on building services that are
> > likely to serve people to whom our digitized historical content is of
> > interest.  My sense is that a set breakdown that suits those service
> > -providers (and this sort of content) would be very different from a
> > breakdown that is useful for current scientific scholarly communication.
> >
> > Perhaps providers of production services can indicate if this list
> > is a useful forum for discussing what practices in relation to sets make
> > sense to them.  They may be having discussions within a community
> > through
> > other lists or meetings.
> >
> >    Caroline Arms                                      caar@loc.gov
> >    Library of Congress
> >    Office of Strategic Initiatives
> >
> > **** All views expressed are personal *********
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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