OA-Forum 1st Workshop: Summing up & way forward

Leona Carpenter (UKOLN)with Donatella Castelli (IEI-CNR) & Susanne Dobratz (HUB)

Open Archives Forum is an Accompanying Measure funded under the 5 th Framework IST Programme. UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, as well as by project Funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

Major successes Italian hospitality

– thanks to our hosts, the workshop secretariat at IEI-CNR

Participants– you made it work for us: 50+ registered, arrived, and worked - together with 6 invited speakers and 9 OA-Forum project workers– 10 European countries represented: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom– several communities, types of project & organisation, e.g.: agriculture, law, space, physics; archives; universities; research bodies; national & research libraries; commercial organisations; computing centres

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

Open Archives Initiative

OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting– progress on v.2 of the harvesting protocol has been rapid, release delayed to 1June

– now a stable protocol

– still a need for information for potential implementers

– still a need to make it easy to be a data provider

– OAI does not make it easy to be a service provider, but goes some way to making it possible

OA-Forum action– training session for next workshop

– technical discussion on OAI-general mailing list

– revision and translation of the OA-Forum glossary

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

Communities & Services [1]

Eprint community, open archive pioneers– have contributed tools, experience– have shaped OAI– recognise that “interoperability is just not enough”, so promote value to users

Other communities– have found solutions which offer food for thought, at least– have sometimes given more consideration

• to user requirements• to services built on archives• to user tasks and scenarios

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

Communities & Services [2]Services

– All open archives that are service providers need more than OAI-PMH, for example:

• query language and/or search interface• usually an additional metadata format• possibly additional service functionality

– Not all open archives need OAI?

OA-Forum actions – OA-Forum will provide pointers to sharable information– Please participate in OA-Forum through

• input to database on the web site • answer questionnaire on the web site • use mailing list

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

The big organisational issues

the importance of data quality the need for knowledge of OAI the need for best practice guidelines the need for understanding of users the need for deeper understanding of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues the pressing need for consideration of organisational issues in general

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

Organisational issues: actions

Working Group on organisational issues– will kick off via OA-Forum mailing list, meet at OA-Forum workshops (Dennis Nicholson volunteered to initiate)– membership must be international across Europe– remit to produce best-practice guidelines, discussion– scope to be determined, could include (for example):

• metadata: use, adequacy of unqualified DC• costing, planning, managing repositories

– will be user-scenario and project-experience driven

IPR expert review commissioned– draft ready for 2nd OA-Forum workshop in autumn

Summary & way forward -- OA-Forum -- 1st Workshop -- Pisa -- May 2002 -- Leona Carpenter

Summary of way forwardOA-Forum will provide:

– OAI training session for next workshop– more pointers to information from website– revised & translated glossary

Share information via website, mailing lists– discuss technical issues on OAI-general mailing list– project, service information on OA-Forum website– OA-Forum mailing list to start, focus on organisational issues

Working Group on organisational issuesIPR expert review3 more workshops to come!