[OAI-implementers] DSpace OAI-PMH support changes, issues

[Tansley, Robert]

So, is there any agreed process for the lifecycle of OAI data providers?  If we make the change below in DSpace (Handles -> OAI scheme identifiers) there seem to be two basic choices:

1/ 'Delete' all the metadata records with Handles so that harvesters know that records have been deleted.  This would be a pain to implement as it'd need to keep a record.

2/ Change the base URL, so effectively a DSpace would become a 'new' OAI-PMH data provider (the old URL would just stop working)

I'd be hesitant to do 2, since that would mean for a lot of harvesters DSpace at MIT and a whole bunch of other places would seem to just 'disappear'.  Openarchives.org doesn't seem to offer any way of changing or removing an entry, and in any case, do service providers actually regularly pay attention to this?

I'm guessing that unless the relevant people are paying attention to this list, most providers wouldn't see the change, and even then they'd only catch the MIT change, other sites running DSpace would have to announce when theirs changed.

Do any others have experience of doing something like this?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tansley, Robert 
> Sent: 17 June 2004 09:54
> To: Simeon Warner; Tansley, Robert
> Cc: oai-implementers at openarchives.org
> Subject: RE: [OAI-implementers] DSpace OAI-PMH support changes, issues
> 
> 
> > On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Tansley, Robert wrote:
> > > - Are Handles appropriate IDs for the OAI metadata records? 
> > > Originally, it seemed pointless to me to use anything 
> else; forcing 
> > > people to jump through yet another hoop to get yet another 
> > unique ID 
> > > to get set up.  However, on occasion people have indicated they'd 
> > > rather use an oai: prefixed identifier.  If anyone can 
> > offer reasons 
> > > and suggestions either way I'd appreciate it.
> > 
> > Aside from the possibility of changing ids to get around the 
> > changing sets problem, I can't see why an oai-identifier 
> > would be preferred to a handle.
> 
> One potential scenario I've thought of is where >1 DSpace 
> contains the same item, with the same Handle (resource ID).  
> Each DSpace might have different/additional metadata though 
> and in any case probably shouldn't use the same ID for 
> OAI-PMH.  So, perhaps an easy way forward is to use an OAI 
> identifier of the form:
> 
> oai:(dspace hostname):(handle)
> 
> E.g.
> 
> oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/1234
> 
>  Robert Tansley / Digital Media Systems Programme / HP Labs
>  http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Robert_Tansley/
>