On Sat, 3 May 2008, Les Carr wrote:

>> IMLS DCC project  (http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/about.asp) has shown 
>> that we are in no better a position now in terms of shareable quality 
>> metadata than we were at the start of the OAI-PMH, when it was UPS, oh, 9 
>> years ago?  and, unlike 9 years ago, folks **know** they need to provide 
>
> By the way, I can't see a Cole and Shreeves presentation in the URL you cite, 
> but the Sarah's presentation which discusses OAI & Metadata problems (Search 
> Interoperability, OAI, and Metadata) was given in 2005, which is the same 
> year that UIUC started their repository. So I don't agree that it represents 
> 9 years of accumulated experience.

if you'll notice, i said, "et al", which means that Cole, Shreeves, "and 
other people on the DCC IMLS project" have published their analysis of 
metadata usage in the OAI-PMH.  :-)  :-)

in the URL above, under "publications" and 
"presentations", you'll see pubs and presentations dated between 2004 and 
2008.  my study, completed in 2002, examined metadata usage in 2001-2002. 
i believe that between the initial experimentation when UPS was developed 
==> the OAI-PMH (1999-2001), my study (2001-2002, published 2003), Dushay 
& Hillmann's (published 2003) study, and the DCC IMLS study (2004-2008), 
among others, we have both anecdotal and formal evaluations of metadata 
usage and quality related to the OAI-PMH over a 9 year period.

Margaret Alexander wrote me off list and told me I should cite my study, 
so here it is:

Ward, J. (2004). Unqualified Dublin Core Usage in OAI-PMH Data Providers. 
OCLC Systems and Services, 20(1), 40-47. Available via: 
http://www.ibiblio.org/jewel/foar/research/mp/jward-ocls_sands-apr2004.pdf.

and Dushay and Hillmann:

N. Dushay and D. Hillmann, "Analyzing Metadata for Effective Use and 
Re-use," DC-2003: 2003 Dublin Core Conference, Seattle, September 2003.
http://dc2003.ischool.washington.edu/Archive-03/03dushay.pdf

do i think the OAI-PMH framework or was dead?  no. hence, posting these 
emails. but i do think it is going to continue evolving, per OAI-ORE, etc.

the lack of shareable, quality metadata has been a barrier 
to using the framework to "its fullest extent", as the lack of quality 
metadata has limited the kinds/types/amounts of services that can be built 
on it. yes, there have been hurdles to overcome, but it has been 5-6 years 
since the first formal studies came out on the lack of shareable quality 
metadata, and that has given some time to improve on what is out 
there...and that hasn't happened.  Rachael Heery mentioned to me at the 
JCDL in 2003 that she had done an an informal study at some point in the 
1990s (unpublished) in which she found similar results to my study 
published in 2003.  in other words, this has been a known problem for a 
while, even if the results have been more informal and anecdotal.

does that mean i think metadata is dead?  no.  just that there is a known 
need for improvement, but given the limited resources of libraries, that 
is not likely to happen in an optimal manner.

>> i'm skeptical that orgs that cannot implement the OAI-PMH or found it 
>> "difficult" to implement and manage will be able to handle something as 
>> complicated as FRBR, et al, no matter how wonderful it is/they are, because 
>> of the technical support/resources/knowledge required.
> Organisations do not (on the whole) implement PMH, any more than they 
> implement SMTP. They install an EPrints/DSpace/Fedora server like they do an 
> Exchange server. Their users might provide unsatisfactory metadata, but then 
> they might send unsatisfactory email too :-)

whether or not one "implements" the OAI-PMH depends on what software 
you use; not everyone uses ePrints/DSpace/Fedora.  in which case, they 
"implement" the protocol b/c it is not built-in, unlike SMTP in mail 
servers, to work w/their specific dl/digital archive software.  while use 
of the word, "implement" may be a misnomer, it has long been used in the 
protocol specs and the tutorials and forums on use of the OAI-PMH.

see:

http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/english/page4.htm
http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/guidelines-oai-identifier.htm
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/oa-forum/tutorial/page1.htm

;-)  :-)

>> i do think that communities are just going to share their content with each 
>> other, whatever framework is used, using their own community specific 
>> formats.
> That seems to be remarkably optimistic! Can you be more specific?

yes, i did in this email: 
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0805&L=jisc-repositories&D=0&T=0&P=1985

(rather than repost what i have already written.)

regards,

Jewel