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Extending Interoperability of Digital Libraries:
Building on the Open Archives Initiative,
Workshop for
Fourth European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for
Digital Libraries,
18-20 September 2000, Lisbon, Portugal
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Introduction
The Open Archives Initiative (OAi)
began in late 1999 as an effort to facilitate the federation of author
self-archiving solutions. The first
meeting, held in Santa Fe in October 1999, brought together
individuals representing a variety of organizations, many of them managing
existing EPrint initiatives (e.g, : arXiv.org
, CogPrints, NDLTD,
RePEc, EconWPA,
NCSTRL, NTRS).
The result of that meeting was the so-called Santa
Fe Convention, a set of technical and organizational specifications to
permit cross-archive metadata harvesting. An article about that agreement
and the first meeting appeared in D-Lib
magazine.
A second meeting of the OAi was held in the form of a workshop
at ACM DL2000 in San Antonio. A brief
report of this meeting appeared in D-Lib
magazine. Participants at the second meeting reviewed experiences with
the initial Santa Fe Convention, raised a number of areas needing revision in
that technical agreement, and discussed a number of organizational and policy
issues. The results of this workshop were:
- The formation of a technical sub-committee that will
thoroughly review the technical agreements and formulate a more stable
Version 2 agreement by the end of the year 2000.
- The consensus that the technical agreements should
be framed in a broader context than solely "author self-archiving
solutions". For example, since the original meeting there has
been strong interest from the various segments of the research library
community in interoperability at the level of metadata
harvesting.
- The formation of a steering committee, with
representatives from various communities including EPrints and research
libraries, which will help guide the future direction of the OAi and provide
a stable basis for operational funding.
Format of the Lisbon Workshop
The success of the agreements that constitute the Open Archives initiative
relies on pariticipation from a broad range of individuals and
communities. The Lisbon meeting, like the meeting in San Antonio,
provides an opportunity for bringing new participants into the OAi community and
addressing the needs of those new participants. The success of the
workshop, therefore, rests on addressing three goals, which will shape the
format of the meeting:
- Developing a shared understanding of what has been accomplished so far in
the OAi through a thorough review of the goals of the Open Archives
initiative and its technical agreements. The ability of the OAi to
reach early agreement on technical infrastructure was based on a relatively
well-defined scope. Understanding and sharing that scope, with new
participants and reviewing whether it is still appropriate, is essential to
moving forward as a group. We expect, therefore, that the initial part
of the workshop will be in the form of a tutorial that will facilitate a
shared knowledge base among participants.
- Understanding how the existing agreements and goals conform with the needs
of new participants and evaluating whether changes are necessary and
practical. We expect that the second portion of the workshop will have
an open discussion format where participants will have ample opportunity to
give feedback on the OAi agreements and policies in the context of their own
needs and context.
- Deciding how to move forward on both the existing OAi agreements and on
any extensions to those agreements that further promote digital library
interoperability. The OAi agreements raise many questions that are
interesting areas for research, evaluation, and implementation. We
expect that the final portion of the workshop will offer the opportunity,
perhaps in break-out groups, for participants to develop plans and/or
collaborations for future work that builds on the Open Archives initiative.
A complete agenda will be published in August and will be posted on this web
site.
Submission of Position Statement
For background on the Open Archives Initiative and the conference sponsoring
the workshop, see
Contact:
Send queries to fox@vt.edu,
hussein@vt.edu,
lagoze@cs.cornell.edu, or
herbert.vandesompel@rug.ac.be.