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<small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Hello, <br>
<br>
Further to the previous email I sent about the <a
href="http://www.ifremer.fr/docelec/doc/2007/acte-3238.pdf">document</a>
we redacted to assess the main difficulties met during the first year
of management of our <a href="http://www.ifremer.fr/avano/">Avano</a>
harvester, I would like to focus, in this email, on just 3 problems
linked to the OAI-PMH protocol, Dublin Core or to repositories
implementation. I would like to focus particularly on these 3 problems
because I guess they should not be so difficult to fix. <br>
<br>
<br>
<big><b>Managing duplicates </b></big><br>
<br>
Too many duplicates in a result list in Harvesters list can affect the
user’s comfort. This is not the main problem harvesters are facing
today, but this should increase in the coming years. Today, at least
two phenomenons can generate duplicates in the harvesters’ databases: <br>
</font></small>
<ul>
<li><small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Several research
organisations or universities can record the same electronic resource
in their own institutional repository. If Avano harvests those
repositories, it will get descriptive index files of the same topic
stored in several places. This can happen if, for example, a
publication is written in collaboration with several institutions. If
so, this publication may be archived on the server of each institution.
Considering the current low auto-archiving rate, especially in life
sciences, this phenomenon is not the main cause of the production of
duplicates.</font></small></li>
<li><small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Projects for
national or thematic aggregators can pose problem. In some countries,
projects of merged institutional repositories can agregate records from
a selection of repositories in a centralised database before displaying
them again in OAI-PMH on their own server. As a consequence, records
referenced on those servers are displayed twice in OAI-PMH: via the
institutional repository and via the centralised database. If the
manager of an harvester does not know about the architecture of those
national or thematic projects, he may record the two different servers
and generate duplicates in his harvester’s result lists. </font></small></li>
</ul>
<small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><i>To help harvesters
administrator to avoid recording repositories generating duplicates,
could we imagine adding to the description of the repository
information about the involvement of the said repository in a national
or thematic agregation system that would reexpose the records in
OAI-PMH from a different server? <br>
</i><br>
<br>
<big><b>Managing Type and Date field</b></big><br>
<br>
As far as I understand, in order to comply with the OAI-PMH protocol,
repositories have to expose their data in the non-qualified Dublin Core
DTD. In this DTD all fields are optional. Those fields are also
non-qualified, meaning, for example, that they do not have to
correspond to an enclosed value list. This optional and non-formalised
information trait raises several issues, especially for the Type field.
<br>
<br>
Indeed, even if the Dublin Core DTD recommends storing the Type
information by using standardised text strings, few repositories take
this into consideration and still present the information as free text
(ex: publication, artjournal, text, article are used to describe an
article). Some harvesters, including Avano, offer their users to limit
their search to one or several types of resources. To set up this
filter, harvesters try to standardise the Type field using a system
based on key-word recognition in this character string. This
standardising is therefore imperfect and the filter system may exclude
resources from the result list when a user narrows his search to one or
several types of specific data. Some informations contained in this
Type field cannot be standardised.<br>
<br>
Even more problematic is the fact that some repositories do not fill in
this field. As an example, in September 2007, out of the 107.000
records available in Avano, more than 26.000 did not have a Type field.
All of those records are automatically barred from the search space if
a user limits is search to one or several selected types. <br>
<br>
<i>Could it be possible to imagine getting a new normalised and
mandatory information about the type of the digital object (text,
image, video….) so harvesters could offer an reliable option to filter
one or several types ob objects from the end-user search.<br>
</i><br>
The publication date is also problematic for harvester. For example, In
September 2007, out of the 107.000 records available in Avano, about
15.000 did not have a publication date. When a record does not have a
publication date or when it cannot be standardised, it is automatically
located at the end of the list if the user wants the results to be
sorted by date. In the same way, when a user limits his search to a
specific period of time (see fig. 9), those files are barred from the
search even if they correspond to the specified search. <br>
<br>
But I guess this problem with the publication date will be more
difficult to fix because it is difficult to define it as mandatory. <br>
<br>
<br>
<b><big>Records without free access to the digital object</big></b><br>
<br>
As far as I understand, the OAI-PMH protocol defines only the sharing
process of bibliographical records contained in a group of
repositories. As a consequence, some repositories mix records without
links to the digital object together with records providing free access
to the resource. Others provide records with paying access (ex :
BePress) or records with restricted access, for example, for university
staff. <br>
<br>
In my opinion, this is the major problem harvesters have to face today.
There is no indication in the Dublin Core DTD showing the harvesters
the degree of accessibility of the objects described in the records. As
a consequence, harvesters cannot pass on this information to their
users or provide them with the ability to filter empty records or
records offering paying access to the resource. <br>
<br>
It is my opinion that hiding records with free full text among records
with inaccessible full text is not helpful. For lack of time and/or
interest, scientists are reluctant to join the Open Access movement and
the archiving rate of free access publications stays very low,
especially in life sciences. Free and immediate access to documentation
is, without doubt, the best way to convince the scientists of the
interest of the Open Access movement. And drowning a minority of
records providing free access publications in an ocean of records
without link to the full text and/or records offering paying access to
the documents may not be the best way to promote the Open Access
movement. <br>
<br>
Again, those records without free access to the full text would not be
a problem for the harvesters if the Dublin Core DTD enabled to signify
the harvesters the degree of accessibility of the objects described in
the records. Harvesters could then provide their users with the
possibility of filtering the records without free access to the digital
object. But it is still not the case. <br>
<br>
<i>Could we then imagine that, in a possible future version of the
OAI-PMH, each record will have to provide a normalised and mandatory
information about the degree of accessibility of the digital object
(free, paying, impossible, restricted,...)? This will help harvesters
so much to provide a better service to theirs end-users. <br>
</i><br>
<br>
What do you think?<br>
<br>
Kind regards,<br>
Fred<br>
</font></small><br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<font face="Arial" size="2">Fred Merceur<br>
Ifremer / Bibliothèque La Pérouse<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:frederic.merceur@ifremer.fr">frederic.merceur@ifremer.fr</a><br>
Tél : 02-98-49-88-69<br>
Fax : 02-98-49-88-84<br>
<a href="http://www.ifremer.fr/blp/">Bibliothèque La Pérouse</a><br>
<a href="http://www.ifremer.fr/docelec/">Archimer, Ifremer's
Institutional Repository</a><br>
<a href="http://www.ifremer.fr/avano/">Avano, a marine and aquatic OAI
harvester</a><br>
</font></div>
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