[OAI-implementers] restricted and free records

[Kat Hagedorn]

Hi all,

You're probably familiar with our OAIster project (I sent around a 
message last month). If not, check us out at 
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/.

Besides developing a search service with OAI harvested records, we're 
also a data provider. We've been discussing in-house how to best make 
our OAI records available for harvest by others.

In particular, we're wrestling with the issue of restricted records vs. 
free records. We have a number of sets that contain free records, but 
other sets are restricted to UM or institutions that carry licenses for 
materials we have. We're OAI-enabling both types of records, since 
restricted materials are valuable for certain audiences (e.g., our 
partners).

To make it clear what is restricted and what is free, we developed the 
concept of groups. One group is "dlpsall" which contains the sets that 
are both restricted and free. Another group is "dlpsfree" which contains 
only those sets that are free. We're serving up groups as sets. The 
repository explorer at http://oai.dlib.vt.edu/cgi-
bin/Explorer/oai1.1/testoai gives a more complete view of what we're 
doing.

My question is: wouldn't it be nice if we could indicate whether a 
record is restricted or free not at the set level but within the record? 
A harvester could then easily choose one type over another without 
resorting to parsing sets info (which would probably take human 
intervention). Is this something that could be made available in v2 of 
the protocol?

Regards,
Kat

-------------------
Kat Hagedorn
OAIster Librarian
Digital Library Production Service
University of Michigan
khage@umich.edu
734-647-8000 (not a direct line)