Yes - harvesting rather than data entry.
Specifically OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting - http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html).
I didn't mean for search - as you note, it isn't the right technology
for this - but for what Jonathon described as "technical mechanisms in
place to keep your local file synchronized with the community file,
automatically with very little human intervention."
If the central authority system was OAI compliant, you could harvest the
authority records to a local copy regularly, and keep them updated -
each time the central record was updated, it would be re-harvested. You
can also set this for deletion as well I believe, although you may not
want to auto-delete records I guess.
One issue here is that OAI development to date has been focussed on bib
data. I don't think anything in the standard stops other usages, but the
most common metadata formats used in conjunction with OAI are DC and
MARC - I'm not sure if there would be any issues around this.
Owen
Owen Stephens
E-Strategy Co-ordinator
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham
Surrey
UK
TW20 0EX
Email: owen.stephens_at_rhul.ac.uk
MSN: owen.stephens_at_rhul.ac.uk
Tel: 01784 443331
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: 25 May 2007 16:45
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Authority maintenance (was Subject costs)
Stephens Owen wrote:
> Now can I be the one to name a technology and say OAI?
>
Sure. Let's follow that for a bit. By OAI you mean the harvesting
technology, right? It doesn't have anything to do with input of data,
but once the data is in a database OAI could be one of the methods of
retrieval. OAI does use datastamps so you could potentially retrieve
only the most recent records/updates. My concern about OAI is the
precision of search, since "harvesting" is not a search for a particular
record but a way to disseminate groups of records from one database to
another. It seems to me that OAI would be great for mirroring of the
database, but I'll need to hear more specifically how it can be used to
find the particular authority record that you need. My assumption has
been that the search for the "right" authority record may need to be
done by a human since there will be a need to distinguish between
similar authority records, perhaps by reading explanatory notes in the
record.
(I realize that I've been thinking about name authorities more than
subject authorities -- are we talking about both?)
kc
>
> Owen Stephens
> E-Strategy Co-ordinator
> Royal Holloway, University of London
> Egham
> Surrey
> UK
> TW20 0EX
> Email: owen.stephens_at_rhul.ac.uk
> MSN: owen.stephens_at_rhul.ac.uk
> Tel: 01784 443331
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kcoyle_at_kcoyle.net
http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Fri May 25 2007 - 09:56:37 EDT