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On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Thomas Krichel <krichel_at_openlib.org>wrote:
> Diane I. Hillmann writes
>
> > 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.
>
> I would interested to see where my contributions demonstrate
> a lack of real understanding.
>
> > 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.
>
> Oh, come on, it's not that big a deal to reproduce an aggregator of
> data. You download DOAR, you fire up Tim's harvester the records,
> bingo. If I can do it, anybody can. It's bigger deal to produce a
> meaningful service because of the inadequate "Dublin Con" metadata
> that is used by default. For AuthorClaim, I need to figure out only
> four things:
>
> * title easy
> * author names easy
> * stable id tough
> * URL to a description of the resource verrry tough
>
> That I still have to do, but I'd be happy to distribute what I can
> come up with.
>
> > What many people don't understand is that OAI-PMH itself is not a
> > discovery mechanism, neither indeed, was OAIster.
>
> I am not sure what you mean by "discovery mechanism" here.
>
> > 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.
>
> The claim that it is "optimized" baffles me. Full disclosure: I was
> part of the techncial committee that designed OAI-PMH. I pleaded to
> adopt a file based approach. With public rsync, it would have been
> lightening-fast. Instead, we have what I think of as a "digital
> ritual" that is cumbersome to maintain, and slow to use.
>
> > 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.
>
> You hit an important point here. Very roughly, from what I can see
> with the archives listed in DOAR, something like 60% are up,
> about 25% are down (kaputt?) and the rest shake like a cow's tail.
> So far about optimality of OAI-PMH.
>
> > 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.
>
> As I said up there, it's not that big a deal, but I am happy to do
> it and share what I have since I have to collect it anyway. Your
> implicit claim that it is hard to harvest from OAI-PMH sources is
> also in contradiction to your claim that OAI-PMH is "optimized".
>
> > Even for those who preferred to harvest from individual
> > sites, OAIster represented a backup source.
>
> Well, when I approached them, they were not eager to share
> what they had. I am much more eager to do it. I love resource
> sharing. Others are more sceptical, I know.
>
> > 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.
>
> Absolutely. I could not agree more. But we need more sharing,
> and more specialization.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
> RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
> skype: thomaskrichel
>
Received on Sun Sep 20 2009 - 15:34:46 EDT