E‐profile: Open Archives Initiative Data Providers. Part I: General
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Pages | 11-19 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050410537617 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | Gerry McKiernan |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
E-profile
Gerry McKiernan
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 3 2004, pp. 11-19, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050410537617 11
Open Archives Initiative Data
Providers. Part I: General
As observed by Ginsparg, the technologi-
cal advances of the Internet and the lack
of initiative on the part of conventional
journals in response to the electronic
revolution rendered the deve lopment of
his e-print archive ``an accident waiting to
happen'' (McKiernan, 2000, p. 128).
arXiv.org
More than a decade ago, Paul
Ginsparg, then a particle physicist with
the Los Alamos National Laboratory,
New Mexico, developed arXiv.org, an
Internet-based service that enabled
authors to store and access preprints ±
pre-publication versions of their work ±
from a central location. While the
system was intended originally only to
organize a haphazard and unequal
distribution of electronic preprints in
the field of high-energy physics, it
quickly became a primary means of
communicating ongoing research within
several select scientific communities.
Perhaps more significantly, arXiv.org
also directly and indirectly inspired
others to establish their own e-print
servers or to develop other alternative
forms of scholarly publishing.
In this first of a series, we profile more
recently established Open Archives
Initiative (OAI) Data Providers whose
content is not only ``harvestable'' by OAI
Service Providers (www.openarchives.
org/service/listproviders.html) (see also
McKiernan, 2003a, b, 2004b), but
perhaps more importantly, offer open
access to institutional and discipline
information resources in a wide variety
of publication and media formats.
Digital Library of the Commons
The Digital Library of the Commons
(DLC) (http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu)
``pr ovi des free access to an archive of
international literature on the commons,
common-pool resources and common
property.'' The ``Commons'' is ``a
general term for shared resources in
which each stakeholder has an equal
interest.'' ``Studies on the commons
include the information commons with
issues about public knowledge, the
public domain, open science, and the
free exchange of ideas ...'' ``Common-
pool'' resources (CPRs) are defined as
``natural or human-made resources
where one person's use subtracts from
another's use, while ``common
property'' is defined as ``a formal or
informal property regime that allocates
a bundle of rights ... Such rights may
include ownership, management, use,
exclusion, access of a shared resource''
(http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/cpredef.html).
The DLC site includes such features
as: ``advanced searching; browsing by
region, sector, and author name; an
author submission portal for uploading
a variety of document formats; and a
service that uses email to alert
subscribers to new documents in their
area of interest.'' To ``search the digital
library and archives', the user can use
any free-text term or phrase, or perform
a subject search using appropriate
words and phrases from a ``Common
Pool Resources Keyword Thesaurus''
(http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/thesaurus/
thesaurus.html). The thesaurus not only
provides access to a controlled
vocabulary, but also includes entries for
related words (e.g. ``MACKEREL'' sa
[see also] ``fisheries'') (http://dlc.dlib.
indiana.edu/thesaurus/thes_m.html).
Terms and phases may also include
standard subdivisions (e.g. ``case
study'', ``history'', ``study and
teaching''). In the basic search, only the
title, assigned keywords, and abstract
text are searched. The user can combine
two or more terms in a Boolean and
relationship (``match all, in any
order''), in a Boolean or relationship
(``match any''), or search the terms as a
phrase (``match as a phrase'') by
selecting the option from an adjacent
drop-down menu.
The DLC also provides an
``advanced search'' (http://dlc.dlib.
indiana.edu/perl/advsearch) to search
(or limit) by one or more fields,
notably:
.author(s);
.year (or range of years);
.title;
.series;
.keywords;
.language;
.region or sector;
.discipline;
.country;
.agency;
.Conference; and/or
.submission date.
For a keyword field search, users can
consult the ``Keyword Thesaurus''from
which terms and phrases can be copied
and pasted into the search field. If
desired, users can search or limit a
query to documents written in one (or
more) common Western languages (i.e.
English, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese, or Spanish). And likewise,
users can conduct or limit a search to
one (or more) regions (e.g. Africa,
Central America and Caribbean, North
America) or resource sectors (e.g.
Agriculture, Information and Knowledge,
Urban Commons). The DLC site
includes an information page, which,
through examples, defines the nature
and scope of each sector (http://dlc.dlib.
indiana.edu/contentguidelines.html).
Users can also search or limit a
query by discipline by inputting a
known discipline (e.g. African Studies,
Chemistry, Economics) or consult,
copy, and paste from a hotlinked
``Discipline Thesaurus''. The user can
also search the collection or limit it to a
``country'' (or countries) discussed in
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