Two things...
Mike
Two things I'd like to open a discussion on:
1. Google dropping OAI support (http://tinyurl.com/6cenxp) - what
difference (if any?) does this make to the approaches that museums/
NFPs/HE are taking in presenting content to the world? Should we stop
working with OAI (perhaps less based on the Google decision, and more
based on the fact that they only have 200 sites using it)
2. I'm trying to apply pressure to the European Digital Library
project (http://www.europeana.eu/) to build in programmatic access to
the content they harvest. I believe (based on the MCG mailing list)
that this has been pushed by people like Jeremy Ottevanger from Museum
of London, but wondered if anyone else had any feedback from EDL as to
likelihood of this happening? I'm personally pretty much of the
opinion that ANY project of this kind that ends up with a portal and
no programmatic/open access to content at the end is destined to small-
timeness. What do people think? How best to apply pressure? Who is
involved?
Cheers
Mike
Ridge, Mia
> 1. Google dropping OAI support (http://tinyurl.com/6cenxp) -
> what difference (if any?) does this make to the approaches
> that museums/ NFPs/HE are taking in presenting content to the
> world? Should we stop working with OAI (perhaps less based on
> the Google decision, and more based on the fact that they
> only have 200 sites using it)
That article is about OAI in *sitemaps*, that's quite different! It
doesn't have anything to do with support for general OAI repositories.
OAI has huge buy-in in the university sector and Open Access movement -
it's not going to go away any time soon.
Anyway, Hub funded museums don't really have a choice about using OAI
(the PNDS uses it), so it's a matter of making the best of it -
repositories can be used to do lots of useful things.
> 2. I'm trying to apply pressure to the European Digital
> Library project (http://www.europeana.eu/) to build in
> programmatic access to the content they harvest. I believe
> (based on the MCG mailing list) that this has been pushed by
> people like Jeremy Ottevanger from Museum of London, but
> wondered if anyone else had any feedback from EDL as to
> likelihood of this happening? I'm personally pretty much of
> the opinion that ANY project of this kind that ends up with a
> portal and no programmatic/open access to content at the end
> is destined to small- timeness. What do people think? How
> best to apply pressure? Who is involved?
I agree - I think it's really important, but didn't have time to
contribute to the thread on the MCG list at the time; and besides you'd
all probably heard enough from MoL by then. But maybe having a
discussion of why APIs are a good thing would help gather use cases (for
museums and end users) we could then take to the EDL.
cheers, Mia
PS could we open the membership list so we can see who we're talking to?
Mia Ridge
Database Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2205 / 020 7814 5723
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: mri...@museumoflondon.org.uk
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
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Mike Ellis
re. membership list - I can do, provided everyone is happy?
Cheers
Mike
________________________
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web: electronicmuseum.org.uk
email: mike....@gmail.com
skype: dmj_ellis
frankie roberto
> That article is about OAI in *sitemaps*, that's quite different! It
> doesn't have anything to do with support for general OAI repositories.
> OAI has huge buy-in in the university sector and Open Access movement -
> it's not going to go away any time soon.
Sure. I didn't even know OAI could be used as a sitemap. Google
dropping it is still hardly a ringing endorsement for the
specification though is it? And Google are so important that we should
take notice.
What the news does seem to suggest is that OAI is complicated and not
very widespread. Whilst it in some ways fulfils a different purpose
from Sitemaps, it's still interesting to examine whether
specifications that ARE widespread and popular could fulfil the same
(or similar) tasks. Sitemaps, OpenSearch, microformats, REST, etc -
these are all specifications and frameworks that are growing in
traction.
> Anyway, Hub funded museums don't really have a choice about using OAI
> (the PNDS uses it), so it's a matter of making the best of it -
> repositories can be used to do lots of useful things.
Mandating it doesn't mean anything! The popular specifications are the
ones that get grassroots developer support...
Frankie
frankie roberto
thrive without Google Sitemap support? It certainly plays a fairly
significant part in my professional life at present! Or should we view
this as a symptom of decline….?"
From: http://blog.paulwalk.net/2008/04/23/google-gives-up-on-supporting-oai-pmh-for-sitemaps/
Ridge, Mia
> What the news does seem to suggest is that OAI is complicated
> and not very widespread.
Surely it depends what you want to use it for? The FAQ
(http://www.openarchives.org/documents/FAQ.html) says it can be
implemented in a day. There are huge resources behind OAI repository
software like http://dspace.org/, http://www.eprints.org/ and
http://www.fedora.info/ and lots of smaller implementations
(http://www.openarchives.org/tools/tools.html).
I think you also have to understand what OAI was designed for, and how
they're responding to changing requirements. From
http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/OAI-organization.php:
"The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability
standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.
The Open Archives Initiative has its roots in an effort to enhance
access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of
scholarly communication. Continued support of this work remains a
cornerstone of the Open Archives program. The fundamental technological
framework and standards that are developing to support this work are,
however, independent of the both the type of content offered and the
economic mechanisms surrounding that content, and promise to have much
broader relevance in opening up access to a range of digital materials.
As a result, the Open Archives Initiative is currently an organization
and an effort explicitly in transition, and is committed to exploring
and enabling this new and broader range of applications."
They have a list of 795 OAI repositories
(http://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites) but registration is
optional and it doesn't seem to cover lots of the big HE ones I've come
across so there must be a lot more.
Anyway. The question isn't "is OAI any good", it's "is OAI useful for
what I want to do"? If you just want to put out a feed of object data,
there are other ways of doing it.
> Mandating it doesn't mean anything! The popular
> specifications are the ones that get grassroots developer support...
It means there's going to be a lot of content available in OAI
repositories. For example, David Dawson said yesterday that the
People's Network Discover service will have 4 million digital objects by
the end of 2008; and that it currently has 500,000 digital objects.
cheers, Mia
Ridge, Mia
> "Can we conclude anything from this? Probably not - surely
> OAI-PMH can thrive without Google Sitemap support? It
> certainly plays a fairly significant part in my professional
> life at present! Or should we view this as a symptom of decline....?"
>
> From:
>
http://blog.paulwalk.net/2008/04/23/google-gives-up-on-supporting-oai-pm
h-for-sitemaps/
But also, "Perhaps 'open access' repositories are less concerned with
Google rankings than the typical website owner. Perhaps the penetration
of OAI-PMH in the world is still below any level that Google could find
particularly interesting - certainly they never went to great lengths to
advertise this support while it lasted."
I never knew Google supported it myself. The content is crawlable
anyway, so maybe most people didn't bother once they'd registered their
main URL? The OAI software (DSpace) we'll be using seems to work with
Google's Webmaster tools already.
Often you wouldn't realise you're browsing content held in an OAI
repository - I don't know if you've used sites like Intute, but that's
based on OAI (http://www.intute.ac.uk/integration/oai-pmh/).
And with lovely tools like SOLR (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/) coming
along, specific implementations will be even less obvious - things will
'just work'.
Ok, I'm going to shut up now cos it's not even like I particularly care!
I just wanted to clear up the OAI/OAI sitemaps confusion.