OAI repository of Cone Search Implementations

[Roy Williams]

I have built a new OAI repository of the Cone Search services. The
information is copied from Alex's registry.

There are (at least) two ways to look at the repository, by going to
it directly (1), or for a nicer styled view, use the Repository
Explorer at Virginia Tech (2).

(1) The repository is hosted at
http://mercury.cacr.caltech.edu:8080/oaicat/index.html
There are some forms that let you make requests, and see responses in
XML.

(2) Go to the Repository Explorer at Virginia Tech
http://oai.dlib.vt.edu/cgi-bin/Explorer/oai2.0/testoai
then scroll through the list of online repositories and you will find
"NVO Cone Search Repository". Once this is selected, you can use the
forms to explore the repository.

Notes

(a) When you select the ListIdentifiers and ListRecords verbs, you
need to specify the metadata format in which results should be
returned. In this case there is only Dublin Core -- you type "oai_dc"
in the metadataPrefix box.

(b) A typical identifier in this repository is:
    oai:conesearch.us-vo.org:00000009.xml
meaning in English "the 9th entry in the URI conesearch.us-vo.org, and
by the way it is an OAI identifier".

(c) I made an attempt (that is not optimal) to convert the info in
Alex's registry to the Dublin Core standard, as follows:
Service Name -> dc:Title
Responsible Party -> dc:Creator
Instrument -> dc:Publisher
Waveband -> dc:Type
Coverage -> dc:Coverage
BaseURL -> dc:Description

(d) In making the conversion from Alex's metadata to DC metadata, I
discovered that we scientists cannot resist attaching URLs to
everything. When the form asks for Name, people put in HTML mailto
tags as well. When it says coverage, they use HTML to point to an
image of the coverage. In our future metadata schemas, we must take
account of this tendency!

(e) This is just an illustration of how OAI can work for us, it is not
meant to be cast in concrete. The object of the exercise is to let us
think about how things should work in the fully elaborated system.

Roy

---------
Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research
mail    roy at cacr.caltech.edu
voice   +1 626 395 3670