Experimental OAI-Based Digital Library Systems

The objective of Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is to develop a simple, lightweight framework to facilitate the discovery of content in distributed archives (http://www.openarchives.org). The focus of the workshop held at the 5 European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL 20001) was to bring researchers in the area of digital libraries who are building OAI based systems so as to share their experiences, problems they are facing, and approaches they are taking to address them. The workshop consisted of invited talks from wellestablished researchers working in building OAI based digital library system along with short paper presentations. Introduction The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) (www.openarchives.org) is an international consortium focused on furthering the interoperability of digital libraries (DLs) through the use of "metadata harvesting". Many previous DL interoperability projects focused on "distributed searching" as the method for federating different DLs into a single service. While feasible for small numbers of nodes (e.g., < 20), large-scale distributed searching has proven difficult in an Internet environment for large numbers of nodes (e.g., > 100). The OAI retreats from the model of distributed searching, and attempts far less technical specification than previous DL interoperability projects. As a result of this decreased 2 scope, the OAI is proving to be a more flexible and resilient for interoperability a sort of "RISC" (reduced instruction set computer) model for DL interoperability. The OAI defines only a generic bulk metadata transport protocol, and leaves other features to be borrowed from other technologies or implemented as independent services. A special workshop, “Experimental OAI-Based Digital Libraries”, was held at the 5 European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL 2001), September 4-9, 2001, Darmstadt, Germany (www.ecdl2001.org). The purpose of this workshop was to bring together practioners and developers interested in building interoperable digital libraries based on the OAI protocol and principles. The twenty-nine workshop participants (listed in Table 1) came from ten different countries to hear a program of five invited presentations and five contributed papers. Laura Maria Anselmi <laura.anselmi@biblio.polimi.it> Donna Bergmark <bergmark@cs.cornell.edu> Leona Carpenter <l.carpenter@ukoln.ac.uk> Leslie Carr <lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Roel de Cock <roel@dtv.dk> Avril Conacher <avril.conacher@ed.ac.uk> Susanne Dobratz <dobratz@rz.hu-berlin.de> Colm Doyle <colm.doyle@lub.lu.se> Christian-Emil Ore <c.e.s.ore@muspro.uio.no> Gudrun Fischer <fischer@lsb.cs.uni-dortmund.de> Sarah Fredline <s.fredline@qut.eud.au> Jochen Hollmann <joho@ce.chalmers.se> Louis Houle <louis.houle@gouv.qc.ca> Rick Luce <Rick.Luce@lanl.gov> John MacColl <john.maccoll@ed.ac.uk> Hamid Reza Mehrabi <hrm@kb.dk> Michael Nelson <M.L.Nelson@larc.nasa.gov> Irene Onyancha <Irene.Onyancha@fao.org> Anna Ortigari <ortigari@cib.unibo.it> Corrado Pettenati <Corrado.Pettenati@cern.ch> Adrian Price <apr@kb.dk> Michele Rubini <Michele.Rubini@biblio.polimi.it> Diann Rusch-Feja <ruschfeja@mpib-berlin.mpg.de> Gauri Salokhe <schwander@lanl.gov> Thorsten Schwander schwander@lanl.gov> David Smith <dasmith@perseus.tufts.edu> George Spencer <gaspence@indiana.edu> Stefan Winkler <stef.winkler@gmx.de> Mohammad Zubair <zubair@cs.odu.edu> Table 1. Workshop Participants