Comments on: ANDS Metadata store: starting point http://ptsefton.com/2010/02/02/ands-metadata-store-starting-point.htm This seems to be a workblog Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:51:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Basil Dewhurst http://ptsefton.com/2010/02/02/ands-metadata-store-starting-point.htm/comment-page-1#comment-1633 Basil Dewhurst Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:57:50 +0000 http://ptsefton.com/2010/02/02/ands-metadata-store-starting-point.htm#comment-1633 Regarding the OAI-PMH, from the perspective of an aggregator, where repositories do not support deleted records it is difficult to keep information up-to-date without dropping all records from a contributor and completely re-harvesting them. We have to do this for services like Australian Research Online and Picture Australia on a regular basis to ensure that the information we provide is as accurate as possible. It seems to me that having to do full re-harvests goes against the intention of the OAI protocol where, in the ideal case, an initial harvest picks up all available metadata and incremental harvests pick up new, modified and deleted records. From an aggregator's perspective it would be ideal if repositories supported deleted records (at the very least) transiently. Regarding People Australia, People Australia is a currently functioning system that ingests party records from contributors, matches names (automatically or by hand), assigns a public persistent identifier and makes records available for humans and machines in a range of formats. Some example records: Maybanke Anderson (feminist and activist) http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-466159 Thomas Huxley ('Darwin's bulldog') http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-869246 Michael Cappo (AIMS researcher) http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-471077 More information about the People Australia project is available via the National Library's new Trove service at http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/aboutPeople. Through the ANDS funded ARDC Party Infrastructure Project, the National Library plans to extend the existing People Australia infrastructure to handle data from the research sector, assign persistent identifiers and provide party data back to the sector. Also the project will be developing software that allows managers in the research sector to manage their party data and obtain persistent identifiers. Regarding data models and parties, for a Party Infrastructure to function well in the ARDC it is critical that enough contextual information about a person or organisation is recorded, stored in and provided from research sector repositories. This contextual information (eg birth/death dates, subject areas, institutional affiliation, occupations, roles, activities) is important for end users, aggregators and repository managers for distinguishing between people, for identifying the resources/data they create, for managing these resources/data and reporting about them. Regarding the OAI-PMH, from the perspective of an aggregator, where repositories do not support deleted records it is difficult to keep information up-to-date without dropping all records from a contributor and completely re-harvesting them. We have to do this for services like Australian Research Online and Picture Australia on a regular basis to ensure that the information we provide is as accurate as possible. It seems to me that having to do full re-harvests goes against the intention of the OAI protocol where, in the ideal case, an initial harvest picks up all available metadata and incremental harvests pick up new, modified and deleted records. From an aggregator’s perspective it would be ideal if repositories supported deleted records (at the very least) transiently.

Regarding People Australia, People Australia is a currently functioning system that ingests party records from contributors, matches names (automatically or by hand), assigns a public persistent identifier and makes records available for humans and machines in a range of formats. Some example records:
Maybanke Anderson (feminist and activist) http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-466159
Thomas Huxley (‘Darwin’s bulldog’) http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-869246
Michael Cappo (AIMS researcher) http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-471077

More information about the People Australia project is available via the National Library’s new Trove service at http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/aboutPeople.

Through the ANDS funded ARDC Party Infrastructure Project, the National Library plans to extend the existing People Australia infrastructure to handle data from the research sector, assign persistent identifiers and provide party data back to the sector. Also the project will be developing software that allows managers in the research sector to manage their party data and obtain persistent identifiers.

Regarding data models and parties, for a Party Infrastructure to function well in the ARDC it is critical that enough contextual information about a person or organisation is recorded, stored in and provided from research sector repositories. This contextual information (eg birth/death dates, subject areas, institutional affiliation, occupations, roles, activities) is important for end users, aggregators and repository managers for distinguishing between people, for identifying the resources/data they create, for managing these resources/data and reporting about them.

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