LogoutWelcome guest
Article Information:
Title:
Reengineering archival access through the OAI protocols
Author(s):
Christopher J. Prom
Journal:
Year:
2003
Volume:
Issue:
Page:
199 - 209
ISSN:
0737-8831
DOI:
10.1108/07378830310479839
Publisher:
MCB UP Ltd
Document Access:
Existing customers:
Please login above.
You do not have rights to view the article
Purchase this document:
Price payable:
GBP £13.00
plus handling charge of GBP £1.50
and VAT where applicable.
Purchase
Request this document:
Print or e-mail a document request to your librarian.
Request
Reprints & permissions:
Request
Abstract:
The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting presents one promising method by which metadata regarding archives and manuscripts can be shared and made more interoperable with metadata from other sources. Against the background of archival descriptive theory and practice, this article outlines a method for exposing deep, hierarchical metadata from encoded archival description (EAD) files and assesses some theoretical and practical issues that will need to be confronted by institutions choosing to provide or harvest OAI records generated from EAD files. Using OAI on top of existing EAD implementations would allow institutions to repurpose their data and potentially reach more users but would also accelerate the process of reengineering archival access mechanisms. Archivists and technologists using OAI with EAD must pay careful attention to the necessity of preserving archival context and provenance.
Keywords:
Archiving, Data administration, Data collection
Article Type:
Research paper