[New Publication] Exposing metadata from CDS/ISIS databases using OAI-PMH
CDS/ISIS is an Integrated Storage and Information retrieval System of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is widely used in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the AGRIS Network and in developing countries. FAO, in collaboration with the Italian Associazione per la documentazione le biblioteche e gli archivi (DBA), worked to ensure dynamic exposing of metadata repositories content from the CDS/ISIS Web applications to the Open Archives Initiative (OAI framework).
A software layer (ISISOAI) was created as mediator between a generic structured CDS/ISIS database with associated links to digital documents (at data provider) accessible on the Internet and a harvester (at the service provider site), based on OAI-PMH protocol. It is an Open source Java Servlet which consists of an extension of OAICat (OCLC) application. The Servlet is adapted for use with WWW-ISIS and wxis software applications and can further be adapted for accessing repositories stored as an XML file or in RDBMS.
This is a very important step, not only for the improvement of the whole harvesting process to the AGRIS central XML repository (reducing E-mails and overloads), but also for the creation of new value-added services based on shared information, compliant with the common standards. In this experiment we kept both possible standard representations of metadata: AGRIS AP, exchanged within the AGRIS community, and Simple DC XML format metadata (in order to extend its use beyond the AGRIS community such as OAISter, BASE etc.).
The results of the work were shown on a poster entitled "Exposing agricultural metadata from CDS/ISIS databases to OAI framework", displayed at the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, from 18-20 April 2007, as well as described in a paper (to be published).
After packaging and documenting, the product will be available for all CDS/ISIS Web based application databases in order to become OAI compliant.
A software layer (ISISOAI) was created as mediator between a generic structured CDS/ISIS database with associated links to digital documents (at data provider) accessible on the Internet and a harvester (at the service provider site), based on OAI-PMH protocol. It is an Open source Java Servlet which consists of an extension of OAICat (OCLC) application. The Servlet is adapted for use with WWW-ISIS and wxis software applications and can further be adapted for accessing repositories stored as an XML file or in RDBMS.
This is a very important step, not only for the improvement of the whole harvesting process to the AGRIS central XML repository (reducing E-mails and overloads), but also for the creation of new value-added services based on shared information, compliant with the common standards. In this experiment we kept both possible standard representations of metadata: AGRIS AP, exchanged within the AGRIS community, and Simple DC XML format metadata (in order to extend its use beyond the AGRIS community such as OAISter, BASE etc.).
The results of the work were shown on a poster entitled "Exposing agricultural metadata from CDS/ISIS databases to OAI framework", displayed at the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, from 18-20 April 2007, as well as described in a paper (to be published).
After packaging and documenting, the product will be available for all CDS/ISIS Web based application databases in order to become OAI compliant.
