Thread: [oss4lib-discuss] FW: A Search Engine for Searching Across Distributed Eprint Archi ves
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From: Dovey J, M. <pj...@ma...> - 2000-10-10 07:37:51
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Hi, I have been following the list and plowing through the archive. What I thought was that there are otherexperts in MetaData out there who have given a considerable amount of thought to the whole issue and who in fact do this as a profession. The Librarians of this world consider this, the issue of metadata, to be their forte and the initiative which is referred to in the message I have forwarded here is one driven by the library fraternity to enable the sharing of documents (academic papers). I would be very interested in seeing a cross-pollination of ideas between the two camps. From the side of the Tropus/Freenet people, there are a lot of very good ideas and a useful framework of particularly metadata that could be taken from the librarians camp and adapted and maybe built on. There are a lot of standards that are already in existance and some of the problems that this list has been discussing are issues that have been considered and "solved". From the Library/Document archive side, there is the issue of distribution and storage which I feel could take advantage of the Freenet model. The Tropus project feels to me as if it is a duplication in some respects of the "Open Archive" model in that it is attempting to impose a search engine across what is in effect a _very_ distributed database, with each archive having to provide a standard mechanisim for "added services" to harvest the metadata so that services can be applied across the top of the system. The Tropus project (what I have seen so far on the list) seems to want to actually distribute the metadata to each user. I do not think that this is as elegant a solution.. I would rather see that a model is implimented where people can choose to add services such as the "virtual file system" that someone proposed, as a "value added" service. Rather work on making available the mechanisims that can act as building blocks for the distributed sharing of files. The other issue of course is whether it is wise to restrict the scope of the project to simply MP3 files? Surely it would be better to introduce something which would indicate the "category" of information which is being added to the system ie if I wish to add an MP3 file, then I specify that it is such, but if I wish to add my favourite poem, which is stored in a plain old text file, then I should be able to specify that that is the format. I would prefer to see a more generic system that would allow for some flexibility in application. There is also another list to which I am cc'ing this message, the "Open Source for Libraries" list (OSS4LIB) which has bandied about the idea of what they have called "Docster" which was a discussion about how an application could be created to allow libraries to share the documents between each other which they currently send in various means during the "inter-library loan" process. If the Tropus project could also address some of those needs, then there could be some real synergy between oss4lib and Tropus as each could make use of the expertise of the other. I look forward to any comments.. John --- John Dovey Assistant Director (IT) Library Services, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Phone : +27-21-8084100, Fax: +27-21-8084336 -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad@COGLIT.ECS.SOTON.AC.UK] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 5:40 PM To: VPIEJ-L@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Subject: A Search Engine for Searching Across Distributed Eprint Archives The first of a remarkable new set of Open Archive Services that will be provided on top of the Open Archives themselves has just been registered: http://arc.cs.odu.edu/ This search engine, ARC, will give you a taste of what it will be like to be able to search the entire refereed research literature, archived across a set of interoperable Eprint Archives distributed around the world spanning all disciplines. So far, the most heavily archived disciplines are Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science, with the Cognitive Sciences (Psychology, Neuroscience, Behavioral Biology, Linguistics, Neuroscience) still only on the lightweight end, but with the forthcoming operational release of the eprints.org self-archiving sofware, the share of all disciplines and papers should begin to grow substantially: http://www.eprints.org Try the ARC searcher, and imagine what it would be like if YOUR papers were already in one of those archives, and could be found and read by everyone, everywhere, for free, and forever. (And then get your institution to install the [free] eprint-archive-creating software -- and then go ahead and self-archive all your papers....) Stevan Harnad ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2000 10:54:08 -0400 From: herbert van de sompel <herbertv@CS.Cornell.EDU> To: UPS List <up...@vo...> Subject: [OAI] a service provider hi, The first Santa Fe compliant service provider has been registered at http://www.openarchives.org/sfc/sfc_services.htm . It is a cross e-print search engine created at Old Dominion University. Some may recognize the interface [http://arc.cs.odu.edu/] since it is very similar to the one used in the UPS prototype. Behind the scenes, however, things have changed quite fundamentally. Congratulations. herbert van de sompel -- Herbert Van de Sompel Visiting Assistant Professor Cornell University -- Computer Science tel + 1 - 607 - 255 - 3085 fax + 1 - 607 - 255 - 4428 digital life in libraries used to be primitive ------------------------------------------------------ UPS mail list Mail submissions to up...@vo... 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