chris prom assistant university archivist university of illinois at urbana-champaign
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Chris Prom Assistant University Archivist University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Do Real Archivists Use OAI? Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Gettysburg, PA October 31, 2003. http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/workpap/marac03.ppt. Goals. Examine rationale for archivists to use OAI - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Do Real Archivists Use OAI?
Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives ConferenceGettysburg, PA
October 31, 2003
Chris Prom
Assistant University Archivist
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/workpap/marac03.ppt
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Goals
• Examine rationale for archivists to use OAI
• Describe my involvement in the University of Illinois Mellon OAI project
• Speculate on OAI’s present and future
• Suggest how archivists may wish to get involved with OAI
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Should Archivists Use OAI?• OAI use growing, well-supported, (relatively)
simple• NSDL base format, NCSTRL project• Allows metasearches across projects and data
types (not content specific)• DL projects for archives, manuscripts, photos,
artifacts, objects use a variety of metadata standards
• Provides wider exposure for collections• University of Michigan OAIster service illustrates
both promise and problems
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Why archivists should use OAI. . .
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???
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NOT a link to NAACP visual materials finding aid
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Found! (. . . 20 mins later)5,000+ items! (11 online)
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UIUC Mellon Project Goals• Test feasibility of harvesting, searching cultural
heritage with OAI• Develop data provider tools that produce usable OAI
records from disparate sources (MARC, EAD, databases, etc)
• Build open-source service provider tools• My role: EAD/OAI
– assess structural problems in mapping to OAI
– develop an effective crossmapping
– allow basic searching in an OAI environment
– test effectiveness of the search
– provide proof of concept
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Our approach
• “Dumbing down” metadata has benefits
• Examined EAD encoding standards
• Generated multiple OAI records for one EAD– top-level record drawn from <eadheader> and <archdesc>
– mini records from <dsc>, with relation to top level
• Preserve context for “hits” by linking user to finding aid in the search/retrieval mechanism
• relations between levels in the finding aid rendered implicitly by our service provider, not within the OAI record
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Our Data and Service Providers• OAI Repository (Data Provider)
– Snapshot of ~5,500 EAD finding aids mirrored on UIUC server
– responds to HTTP get and post with ASP scripts and XSLT stylesheet to provide requested data
– Records produced from EAD include XPointer– When EADs are split into their subordinate components,
Xpointers identify the individual parts• Service Provider
– Server-side scripts use the XPointers in DC identifier tag for rendering and linking
– Xpointer used to move user deep in finding aid, preserve context
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XPointer
• WC3 Recommendation, March 2003: http://www.w3.org/XML/Linking
• Can identify XML fragments using a superset of the XPath syntax, e.g. xyz.xml#xpointer(//dsc[1]/c01[2]/c02[3]/c03[10])
• When EADs are split into their subordinate components, Xpointers identify the individual parts
• To make it work, both data providers and service providers would need to share a set of assumptions about HOW it should work
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<rdf:RDF> <rdf:Description> <dc:identifier> http://…/…/test.xml#xpointer(//dsc[1]/c01[8]/c02[5]/c03[244]) </dc:identifier> <dc:title>Toensing, Richard</dc:title> <dc:type>text</dc:type> <dc:type>archives or manuscripts</dc:type> <dc:type>file</dc:type> <dcterms:isPartOf> <rdf:Description> <dc:identifier> http://…/…/test.xml#xpointer(//dsc[1]/c01[8]/c02[5]) </dc:identifier> <dc:title>Various Composers</dc:title> </rdf:Description> </dcterms:isPartOf> </rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>
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Search Results
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Full Record
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Hit in Context of Finding Aid
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What I learned• Using OAI can exposure your collections to new
audiences• Not good enough to harvest from image databases,
nor just give just top-level link to FA• But many users confused when stumble on a
finding aid; “where’s the beef”• An “archives friendly” service provider would
– . . . Serve as basis for cross-repository searches– . . . Reenginner the notion of what is a finding aid by
allowing access from the back end– . . . Undo some of the damage inflicted when archival
materials are treated as items– . . . need to reconstruct context using local mirrors of
the ead document
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The Future
• OAI Currently better suited to representing digital objects than descriptive data
• Service providers currently limited in number, 16 listed on openarchives.org
• Will OAI take off?
• IMLS Digital Collections and Content Project: (http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/)
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Data Provider Options
• If you want to provide dynamic (full) OAI metadata– Metadata items in Relational database
• Map fields or pages to DC record• Use webscripting language to respond to harvester requests
– XML, e.g. Finding aid (as a digital object)• map from <eadheader> and <archdesc>• use encodinganalog recommendations from
RLG Best Practices or pass entire EAD file with XSD schema– metadata for digital objects linked from EAD???
• use XSLT and XPointer to provide context and allow service providers to replicate hierarchical structure of EAD.
• Depends on SP’s ability to handle xpointer
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Data Provider Options, cont.
• Static OAI metadata– Suitable for small collections which are not
growing– All metadata should be contained in a single
xml file on a webserver– Projects which will harvest metadata (e.g.
IMLS Digital Collections and Content) may be able to provide assistance in conversion.
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Resources• OAI website:
– http://www.openarchives.org/
• UIUC Provider Tools– http://uilib-oai.sourceforge.net/– http://sourceforge.net/projects/uilib-ead/
• Library Hi Tech, Vol 21, No. 2, special issue on OAI
• Further implementation guidelines– http://dli.grainger.uiuc.edu/publications/twcole/jcdl-
oai/JCDL_2003_OAI_Intro.ppt
• This powerpoint:– http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/workpap/marac03.ppt
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Do Real Archivists Use OAI?
Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives ConferenceGettysburg, PA
October 31, 2003
Chris Prom
Assistant University Archivist
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/workpap/marac03.ppt