OpenDOAR Help
OAI-PMH | Number of items | Sofware | Policies | ContactsOpenDOAR Fields
This section provides information and guidance on the fields in OpenDOAR records, especially for the things we have difficulty finding on repository websites.
OAI-PMH
The OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a machine-to-machine interface provided by most repository software platforms. This allows specialist search services such as BASE and CORE to harvest and process XML metadata for the items in your repository. OAI-compliant repositories have an 'OAI Base URL' in addition the URL for human users. For instance, University of Winnipeg's WinnSpace Repository (http://ecommons.uwinnipeg.ca/) has the OAI Base URL http://ecommons.uwinnipeg.ca/oai/request. For further details, an excellent online tutorial on the OAI-PMH is available from the Open Archives Forum.
Please supply us with the OAI Base URL for your repository. If you do not know whether you have one, or if you do not know what it is, you may need to contact your software supplier or technical development staff.
Number of items
The number records in your repository, which be subdivided into full text items (or their equivalents) and metadata-only records. Records counts are often surprisingly difficult to find. OAI-PMH can sometimes be used to count records, but this often slow and unreliable. Some repositories give the current total number of records on their home pages, the better cases giving separate figures for items with available full texts. In other cases, the record counts may have to be determined by adding up figures in a 'browse by...' page - e.g. the annual figures in an EPrints "Browse by Year" page.
To help us record accurate record counts, please provide us with one or more of the following:
- The URLs of the web pages where you display the number of items in your repository
- Your OAI-PMH Base URL (see above)
- The URLs of 'browse by...' or contents pages, that could be use to determine your repository's size
- Just send us your current total
Please note: We prefer URLs, because these will enable us to update your total automatically in the future.
Software
This field records the software platform used for the repository. It may be:
- a repository software package such as EPrints or DSpace
- a hosting service such as BePress, Open Repository, where the repositories are hosted on a shared commercial server
- the repository module of a Library Information System (LIS) such as ExLibris.
- the repository component of a research information system (RIS) such Symplectic Elements
- specially developed repositories based on a toolkit or technology such as Fedora
- a normal website maintained using a web authoring tools such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, or a content management system (SMS) such as Drupal.
When supplying information to OpenDOAR, please give us the name of the sofware package or hosting service. If you are using the repository module of an LIS or RIS, please give is the name of the main system and any separate name for the component. For specially developed repositories and repositories that are websites, please give us the name of the principle technologies or tools you are using.
Policies
Every repository should ideally have policies on:
- the re-use of metadata
- the re-use of full texts (or their equivalent)
- permitted content - i.e. the subjects and types of item that can be deposited
- submission requirements, including moderation of new items
- long term preservation of the data
Policies should be visible to users as downloadable documents or web pages in your repository. If you have not yet specified policies for your repository, the OpenDOAR Policies Tool may help you.
Please send OpenDOAR the URLs of your policy web pages. You may also send us policy documents, together with the URLs of the web pages that have down links for the documents. English translations are also welcome, where necessary.
Contacts
OpenDOAR aims to have contact details for the administrators or managers for every repostory. These benefit of bona fide enquirers, and we use them ourselves to communicate with repositories and for OpenDOAR's moderated Email Distribution Service. It is possible to opt out of the Email Distribution Service. Email addresses are obfuscated to deter abuse by spammers.
Please provide OpenDOAR with the name and email address of your repository's administrator using the Suggestion Form.