[OAI-implementers] Is this a valid OAI-PMH response?

[Gary McGath]

Stuart Lewis wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We have a vendor provided system with an OAI-PMH interface. When issuing
> a ListRecords command, it returns (edited for brevity):
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
> 
> <OAI-PMH xmlns="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/"
> xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
> xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/
> http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/OAI-PMH.xsd">
>    
>    <responseDate>2009-07-20T21:05:43Z</responseDate>
> 
>    <request verb="ListRecords" metadataPrefix="oai_dc" set="SET1">
>        http://www.example.com/oai
>    </request>
>    
>    <ListRecords>
> 
>       <record>
>          <header>
>             <identifier>oai:record:1</identifier>
>             <datestamp>2009-06-30T11:29:18Z</datestamp>
>             <setSpec>SET1</setSpec>
>          </header>
> 
>          <metadata>
>             <record
> xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
> xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
> xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
>                <dc:title>Title</dc:title>
>                <dc:creator>Creator</dc:creator>
>                <dc:description>Description </dc:description>
>                ...
>             </record>
>          </metadata>
> 
>       </ListRecords>
> 
>    </record>
> 
> </OAI-PMH>
> 
> To me this looks invalid - the <record> element within the metadata is
> not expected to be there (a <record> is defined as being the top level
> of a record, and thus contains a header and metadata). Most OAI-PMH
> interfaces I have seen put an <oai_dc:dc> wrapper around the metadata.
> 
> The http://www.validome.org/ validator backs this up, and reports that:
> 
> Invalid content found starting with element 'record'. One of
> '{WC[##other:"http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/"]}' is expected
> 
> However our vendor is sure that this valid output, and when we checked
> it, the site passed the OAI-PMH registration validation system OK.
> 
> Any advice appreciated! :)

The response is not delivering the promised metadata format. "record" is 
the root tag of the metadata, according to the OAI/PMH definition. This 
means that the provider is delivering metadata in a format which isn't 
Dublin Core or any other standard metadata format, in spite of the cd 
elements within the root element. But the request specifies 
metadataPrefix="oai_dc", so the response is expected to deliver Dublin 
Core. Any client that issues a request for DC metadata and gets that 
response will be unable to cope with it.


-- 
Gary McGath
Digital Library Software Engineer
Harvard University Library Office for Information Systems
http://hul.harvard.edu/~gary/index.html