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Akademisk forskning onlineAcademic Research in Sweden online

A pilot study of an OAI-compliant portal

Eva Müller, eva.muller@ub.uu.seElectronic Publishing CentreUppsala University Library, Sweden

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I will focus on

• Interoperability• Based on practical experiences• Relationship between a library

catalogue & a separate web service

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Background

• Five universities in Sweden are participating in a common portal for electronically published documents – the DiVA portal (http://publications.uu.se/portal/)

• Portal based on DiVA publishing system built at Uppsala University

• Want to allow other Swedish universities to participate in the portal (even without DiVA)

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Grant for a pilot study

• Academic Research in Sweden Online• Funded by the Royal Library’s

Department for National Coordination and Development (BIBSAM)

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DiVA Publishing System

• Focus on workflow– reuse and enhance the data originally entered

by authors for metadata and a digital master for an electronic & printed version

– store & checksum the files– assign a persistent identifier– send a copy to the National Library Archive

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Implementation

• Java – XML technologies• Oracle database used for searching• Architecture: component-based design

– Modularity and reusability of the components– Possibility to seamlessly replaced modules with

improved implementations of the component

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Issues

• Do we need a separate portal for ETDs?• What kind of added value would such a

portal provide?• What is the minimum level of interoperability

for meaningful resource discovery of academic publications in Sweden?

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Levels of interoperability

• Technical (protocol level, file formats, technical solutions used)

• Content (metadata formats, vocabulary used)

• Organizational (agreements on exchanging of data, rules for access and reuse of data)

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Strategies

• Federation strategy– Agreements on the technical, content and

organizational levels • Harvesting

– Agreements on the technical level – for example OAI-PMH

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Methodology

A comparison between a portal built using the federation strategy and another built by harvesting of available metadata

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DiVA-portalAn example of a portal based on the federation strategy

• Agreements on the…– technical level (using of DiVA Publishing System)– content level (DiVA Document Format,

vocabularies used)– organizational level (exchanging of metadata,

rules for access, support of the technical solution, joint development of new services)

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Functionality

• Federated searching and browsing for theses, dissertations and other publications at a number of Swedish universities

• Metadata publishing service

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Academic Research Online PortalAn example of a portal based on the harvestingstrategy(http://publications.uu.se/portal)

• Goals– Allowes even more Swedish universities to

take part in the common portal– Focus on ETDs & new services– Simpler integration of participating

collections– Low barrier technical solutions

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Implementation

• OAI-PMH used primary as metadata transmission protocol– Interoperability & extensibility (possibility

to use even community specific metadata)• Harvested metadata stored in a native

XML database (eXist)• Simple search interface devloped

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OAI compliance

• Only 6 repositories could be harvested directly (5 DiVA repositories & 1 repository using E-prints software)

• OAI-PMH for metadata transmission is not practical for all repositories at the moment

• Alternative methods were used to collect metadata

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Results

• A very simple interface to the harvested metadata (http://publications.uu.se/afo/)– Lack of content interoperability

(vocabularies, granularity of description)• A number of recommendations about

interoperability level• Starting point for additional discussions

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Conclusions

• Interoperability strategies has a direct impact on the quality of service, results delivered and on the costs

• Levels of interoperability = granularity of resource discovery and services enable

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Next steps

Project proposals submitted to BIBSAMFocus on interoperability:• To define and agree on different levels on

content operability– Low barrier level (ex. simple DC using within OAI

technical framework)– Richer level (URN:NBN, MARC XML, DiVA

Document Format)– Vocabulary level (controlled vocabularies)

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Next steps

• To build up a technical infrastructure supporting interoperability

• To achieve some basic organizational interoperability agreements (exchanging of data, rules for access…)

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This case study shows

that common agreement on interpretation of metadata standards and vocabularies is necessary for the meaningful resource discovery

achieving a national system that facilitates this access is a question of interoperability not only on the technical, but also on the content and organizational level

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More information

• http://publications.uu.se/portal/• http://publications.uu.se/afo/• http://publications.uu.se/etd2003/• http://publications.uu.se/epcentre/