OAI-PMH for Resource Harvesting

Abstract

A variety of examples have arisen in which the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) has been used for applications beyond bibliographic metadata interchange. One of these examples is the use of OAI-PMH to harvest resources and not just metadata. Advanced resource discovery and preservations capabilities are possible by combining complex object formats such as MPEG-21 DIDL, METS and SCORM with the OAI-PMH. In this tutorial, we review community conventions and practices that have provided the impetus for resource harvesting. We show how the introduction of complex object formats for the representation of resources leads to a robust, OAI-PMH-based framework for resource harvesting. We detail how complex object formats fit in the OAI-PMH data model, and how (compound) digital objects can be represented using a complex object format for exposure by an OAI-PMH repository. We also cover tools that are available for the implementation of an OAI-PMH-based resource harvesting solution. Furthermore, we will provide examples of resource harvesting projects that are based on the complex object format approach, including: (*) The effort aimed at mirroring the collection of the American Physical Society at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; (*) mod_oai, an Apache module that provides OAI-PMH-based resource harvesting for Apache Web servers; (*) The DSpace MPEG-21 DIDL plug-in that allows harvesting of DSpace resources through the native DSpace OAI-PMH interface. [This tutorial includes not only the uploaded introductory slides, but also a set of additional material (.ppt, .avi, .xml, .txt and .pdf files)]