Sadly much of the discussion about what's happened to OAIster lacks real
understanding about what OAIster represents and what the OAI-PMH
protocol represents as an alternative distribution system. Whether or
not the information from OAIster is now available in WorldCat or
FirstSearch for "free," the loss of OAIster as an openly available OAI
aggregator represents a huge loss, and not just to those sites that
depended upon it to help distribute their information.
What many people don't understand is that OAI-PMH itself is not a
discovery mechanism, neither indeed, was OAIster. In the OAI world, data
providers make their records available to data harvesters, and those
harvesters make services available to users. OAI-PMH is optimized for
automated harvesting over time, multiple metadata formats, and
incremental updating. Among the more common services might be discovery,
but discovery was by no means the whole story. OAIster aggregated
information from most of the servers available in the OAI world--in some
cases I believe they maintained data that was no longer available from
its original source. Without an aggregation service like OAIster, those
who use the protocol to build information services must harvest from
many individual servers, which may be tougher and more difficult to
maintain. Even for those who preferred to harvest from individual sites,
OAIster represented a backup source.
OAI may not be everyone's notion of an important alternative to the
controlled (in all senses of the word) centralized notion of
distribution and service provision that OCLC provides, but I firmly
believe that WorldCat and FirstSearch are not an adequate substitute for
OAIster. I believe this change should be another wake-up call for those
who believe that having all services run by OCLC is a significant
impediment to the healthy innovation that the library community needs to
move forward.
Diane
John Chapman wrote:
> Hi everyone, I am sending the following on behalf of my colleague
> Michelle Harper.
>
> -John Chapman
> OCLC
>
> I would like provide a clarification and a few answers on this subject:
> Your records will be freely discoverable by anyone in WorldCat.org for
> no fee, no login, or any other �ggating�h requirement.
> Your records will also be discoverable in FirstSearch, for which we
> are not receiving a dime of additional compensation.
> -Michelle Harper
>
> On Sep 19, 2009, at 3:15 PM, Perry Willett <pwillett01_at_GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>> The allegations that Michigan got paid for this are spurious and untrue.
>> OAIster is a service that Michigan ran for *years* on their own dime,
>> and
>> decided that they couldn't carry it any more. I don't have any
>> comment on
>> the OCLC's service, but just wanted to correct this meme of Michigan
>> benefiting financially from this.
>>
>> Perry Willett
>> California Digital Library
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Jonathan Rochkind
>> <rochkind_at_jhu.edu>wrote:
>>
>>> i re-read the annoucnement again, more carefully. You're right, they're
>>> taking away free OAISter access. That's messed up.
>>>
>>> Okay, who wants to start a new project to do what OAISter did, but
>>> better
>>> and still free? Maybe Mellon Foundation would fund it, are they still
>>> funding such things?
>>>
>>> I hope umich realized what they were selling out, and got paid well
>>> for it.
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
>>> [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On
>>> Behalf Of Thomas Krichel [krichel_at_OPENLIB.ORG]
>>> Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 10:10 PM
>>> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>>> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Special OAIster Announcement from OCLC
>>>
>>> Jonathan Rochkind writes
>>>
>>>> I read this as saying that
>>>
>>> Why do we have to do OCLC astrology? Why can't they say clearly
>>> what they want to do?
>>>
>>>> If OCLC stopped providing the free access points to OAISter that we
>>>> are used, that would be a problem. Doesn't sound like this is
>>>> happening.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://visit.oclc.org/t?ctl=26B403F:09562C313F0DE2FB62E0BBD7DFD73DADF544A2D6437664E7&
>>>
>>>
>>> asks me to nominate an IP address to receive free access to
>>> OAIster from. Meaning that the IP addresses will no have free access.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
>>> RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
>>> skype: thomaskrichel
>>>
>
Received on Sun Sep 20 2009 - 11:41:15 EDT