Howard Noble wrote:

>What would be really great is if OAI targets registered themselves and
>exposed their metadata to SRW federated searches - then we really would have
>a lot of interoperable metadata available that pertains to easily accessible
>resources...?
>
>
Hm. Why would they do this?

OAI repositories already expose their metadata through the widely known
and widely used OAI Harvesting Protocol, and are registered on sites
like OAIster. They might reasonably ask, why don't you simply harvest
metadata from them using their existing protocol?

Moreover, they might ask why they should participate in a federated
search. If I were an OAI repository, I would be asking whether the other
repositories in the federation are willing to expose all of their
metadata (and if so, to ask why it is not released via the
well-established OAI protocol).

There is a danger in creating asymmetric relations between harvest-style
repositories and service-type repositories, between full-open
repositories and partially closed repositories.

Perhaps this is not an issue in this case - but it was certainly an
issue in Canada, one which we never resolved (the corporations just
won't share, not even metadata).

-- Stephen


--
Stephen Downes ~ Research Officer ~ National Research Council Canada
http://www.downes.ca ~ [log in to unmask] __\|/__ Free Learning