[UPS] eprints.org and OpenArchives

[Stevan Harnad]

Simeon is quite right. Rob will be replying directly, but the
interoperability aspects will be strongly reinforced, both in the
dosumentation and in the design, to minimize the probability that 
any of the archives created using Rob's software will fail to be
interoperable.  -- Stevan

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Simeon Warner wrote:

> 
> To UPS list and eprints.org:
> 
> Browsing the eprings.org blurb at
>   http://www.eprints.org/index.html and
>   http://www.eprints.org/software.html,
> I'm concerned by the statment on the software page (bullet 3)
> which says:
> 
> " The archive administrator can also decide that metadata is held about
> each EPrint. This is decided in three or four stages:
>   1. Decide a maximal set of metadata fields that should be stored (for
>   example, "authors", "title", "journal", "journal volume", etc.)  
>   2. Decide what types of EPrint should be stored (for example, refereed
>   journal article, thesis, technical report, unpublished preprint)
>   3. For each EPrint type, decide which metadata fields should be stored
>   for EPrints of that type, and which of those fields are mandatory.
>   4. (Optionally, for interoperability) decide how these metadata fields
>   map to the Santa Fe set "
> 
> While the home page proudly touts the EPrints software as `fully
> interoperable', point 4 above makes interoperability sound like
> something one could think about, given a rainy day with nothing
> else to do. 
> 
> Even with nice software, a multitude of non-interoperable archives is
> little better than a collection individual web-sites and we are back to
> generic web search engines. I urge the EPrints team to make a much
> stronger statement about the benefits of (need for) interoperability, and
> hence support for the Santa Fe metadata set.
> 
> I think the availability of generic archive software is a good thing
> but would hate to see it lead to the creation of large numbers of
> non-interoperable archives.
> 
> --
> Simeon Warner
> 
> 
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