OLAC Repositories Standard: Call for review

[Nicholas Thieberger]

Dear Steven and Gary,

Thanks for the invitation to comment on the OLAC Repositories standard.

Despite having successfully established a static repository I think
the process is fairly onerous as it stands. And while the promise of
longterm beneffits is important, the need for immediate benefits may
prevent some archives from engaging with the OLAC/OAI approach.

The PARADISEC catalogue contains much more metadata than is provided
for in the current OLAC repositories standard and it would be useful
to be able to provide more detail to users. I expect the place to
have discussed this is on the metadata list and I apologise for not
having done so earlier.

Our catalogue is in FMPro and we export the fields required via XSL
to the OLAC compliant static repository. The XSL was written for us
by Steven Bird.

For our purposes we need to show potential depositors a catalogue of
the metadata. If we point them to the OLAC site there is currently no
facility to simply browse the contents of a particular repository.
For example you can't search for its identifier here
http://www.language-archives.org/tools/search.php4? and get all
records from that repository (at least I can't, searching for
paradisec, or paradisec.org.au, or pdsc). I understand that this
facility will be built sometime by the LinguistList people and look
forward to that happening.

So while the repositories document in itself is fine, the actual
implementation of its contents takes some doing!

Nick


--

Project Manager
PARADISEC
Pacific And Regional Archive for DIgital Sources in Endangered Cultures
http://www.paradisec.org.au


Project Manager
nickt at paradisec.org.au
Ph 61 (0)3 8344 5185