Search Engine for Repositories Only?

From: Philip Hunter <phunter2_at_staffmail.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 11:39:16 +0100

Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> (2) Why build these national and local restricted range OAI search engines
> instead of simply building restricted-range options into the
> full-spectrum OAI search engines such as OAIster?
> http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/
>
There are a number of reasons why you might want national and restricted
range OAI search engines as part of a global infrastructure for repository
usage, including questions of quality assurance and the practical management
of repository networks. This question came up at the WWW2006 JISC workshop
on repositories, where I suggested that global services might be built most
practically on the basis of locally developed and managed services. The
institutional and geographic level levels of repository services which,
while of little or no interest to the user, offer a number features which
can support the quality and sustainability of global OAI search services.

This is one of those quasi-theological issues which are often quite
divisive - do we work from the centre (full-spectrum OAI search engines,
harvesting local services direcctly, with restricted range search options),
or do we build global services using a tiered structure (restricted range
OAI search engines whose aggregated records are globally harvested)? We
might have to suck it and see. The choice also depends to some extent on
what the world at large thinks repositories are for - a matter clearly still
in flux.


*********************************
Philip Hunter
IRIScotland
Digital Library Division
Edinburgh University Library
George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LJ
Tel: +44 (0)131 651 3768
*********************************

> Stevan Harnad
> American Scientist Open Access Forum
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/
>
Received on Wed Aug 02 2006 - 13:58:16 BST

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