OAI-ORE European Rollout Meeting

The ORE specifications are developed in response to a significant challenge that has emerged in eScholarship. In contrast to the paper publications of traditional scholarship, or even their digital counterparts, the artifacts of eScholarship are complex aggregations. These aggregations consist of multiple resources with varying media types, semantics types, network locations, and intra- and inter-relationships. The future scholarly communication, research, and higher education infrastructure requires standardized approaches to identify, describe, and exchange these new outputs of scholarship.

The ORE specifications address this challenge with the ORE data model that defines how to associate an identifier, a URI, with aggregations of web resources. By referring to these identifiers, aggregations can then be linked to, cited, and described with metadata, in the same manner as any web resource. The ORE data model also makes it possible to describe the structure and semantics of these aggregations. The ORE specifications define how these descriptions can then be packaged in the XML-based Atom syndication format or in RDF/XML, making them available to a variety of applications.

In addition to their utility in eScholarship, the ORE specifications also apply to our everyday web use where we often encounter aggregations such as multi-page HTML documents, and collections of multi-format images on sites like flickr. OAI-ORE descriptions of these aggregations can be used to improve search engine behavior, provide input for browser-based navigation tools, and develop automated web services to analyze and preserve this information.

The European rollout meeting in Southampton is intended for information managers and strategists, and implementers of networked information systems. It will be led by the two coordinators of OAI-ORE, Carl Lagoze of Cornell University and Herbert Van de Sompel of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Attendees will learn about the ORE data model. They will also learn about the translation of this data model to the XML-based ATOM syndication format. In addition, they will hear the results of initial experiments with the specifications by OAI-ORE community members. There will be ample time for discussion and questions and to meet other members of the OAI-ORE community. (NOTE: attendees must register in advance and attendance is limited). A US meeting with similar content will be held at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) on March 3, 2008.

About the Open Archives Initiative: The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination, sharing, and reuse of web-based content. OAI-ORE work is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, and the National Science Foundation (IIS-0430906). More information is available at http://www.openarchives.org.

Draft Schedule

• University of Southampton
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