OLAC Repositories Standard: Call for review

[Steven Bird]

On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 11:37, Nicholas Thieberger wrote:
> 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.

Agreed.  The ORE editor on the LINGUIST site is meant to address this
for small repositories.  However, the Paradisec archive already exists
in an FMPro database and needs to be exported to the static repository
format.  There's no way to protect such archive administrators from
having to deal with XML and arcane XML validation tools.

> 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.

Enriching OLAC metadata is an ongoing activity; anyone is free to
propose a working group, develop a vocabulary, and put it through the
OLAC Process.

> 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.

The advanced OLAC search facility on the LINGUIST site permits users to
restrict searches to particular archives, but not to list all records of
a given archive.  If you just specify and archive and hit the search
button, it says: "Please enter one more search condition!!"  I wonder if
it is necessary to insist on an extra search condition when the archive
has been specified.

I've added the requested functionality to the OLAC Tools page.

-Steven Bird