[OAI-implementers] last-minute question about OAI-rights beta release

[Simeon Warner]

Hi Susanna,

Early discussions of the oai-rights group led us to conclude that the work
could sensibly be split in two: rights about metadata (OAI-PMH records)
and rights about resources (things OAI-PMH records are about). We took the
easier half first and developed the current beta specification for
conveying rights expressions about metadata.

We intend to continue this work to develop guidelines for conveying rights
about resources within the OAI-PMH framework. Note that it is not clear
that this requires extensions to the protocol. For example, the technique
of using an additional metadata format, for say ODRL or CC, fits well
within the current model and protocol (it is just another set of metadata
about the resource). However, there are important issues with unambiguous
identification of the resource, profiling and such.

Cheers,
Simeon


On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Susanna Mornati wrote:
> Dear Carl (met in Bath and OAI3)
> and Herbert and Michael and Simeon (unfortunately never met but hopefully
> some time!),
>
> I have carefully read the document you produced as beta release of the
> implementation guidelines for conveying rights expressions about metadata
> in the OAI-PMH protocol:
> http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/guidelines-rights.htm
>
> Over one year ago, I had placed the same interest in the OAI-rights white
> paper:
> http://www.openarchives.org/documents/OAIRightsWhitePaper.html
>
> What follows may be the expression of my ignorance or misunderstanding, so
> please forgive me in advance if I write nonsense!
>
> I was expecting that an extension of the protocol would be proposed to
> convey rights expressions also about the resources, not just about their
> descriptive metadata. In a document provided by RoMEO, RoMEO Studies 6:
> Rights metadata for open-archiving:
> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/
> at page 8 I read:
> "Expressing rights over an individual resource via it's metadata may be
> done in two ways. All items in an OAI-compliant repository must, as a
> minimum, provide an unqualified Dublin Core metadata record for harvesting.
> One of the 15 Dublin Core elements is <dc:rights>. [...] Project RoMEO
> proposes that the rights metadata made available under the OAI-PMH is
> machine readable. There are various ways this can be achieved. One way is
> to embed the rights metadata within the dc:rights element, another is to
> link to the rights metadata from within the <dc:rights> element. One way to
> implement the latter approach is to utilise a OAI GetRecord request within
> the dc:rights element. By passing a parameter such as 'oai-cc' in the
> metadataPrefix argument of the GetRecord request, actioning the request
> would result in a rights record for the resource being returned. The
> returned rights record should describe one of the 11 CC licence either in
> RDF/XML form or the  Romeo/ODRL form outlined earlier. This approach means
> that in addition to a DC record being available for each resource (eprint)
> an additional rights metadata record would also be available for each
> resource and this fact should be communicated in the data provider's
> response to the OAI-PMH ListMetadataFormats request."
>
> Apart from the declared white-paper purpose (which I share) to deal with
> any expression, not limited to Creative Commons, my question is: was any
> proposal to convey rights about the resource via the protocol taken into
> consideration? If not, why? Is something of that kind being considered for
> the future?
>
> Thank you very much for your patience reading so far, and thank you very
> much for the amount of beautiful work done on the protocol!!!
>
> Best wishes,
> Susanna
>
>
> Dr. Susanna Mornati
> Project  Leader AEPIC, www.aepic.it
> Coordinator PLEIADI, www.openarchives.it/pleiadi
> CILEA - Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT
> Via R. Sanzio 4, I-20090 SEGRATE (MILANO) - ITALY
> mobile +39 348 7090 226, office +39 02 2699 5322
> mailto:mornati at cilea.it
>
>
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