OPEN ARCHIVE LIBRARY

Meaning: The word open Archive frequently conjure up images of information access without any
associated cost or restriction. Open Archive simply as being an archive that implement the Open Access
Initiative (OAI) protocol for metadata harvesting, thus allowing remote archives to access its metadata
using an open standard.
Open Archive Library must be based on the following fundamental design principles:
All services must be standard component encapsulated within extended Open Archives,
accessed by other services through their OAI interfaces and with all input parameters being
instantiations of standard OAI parameters with semantics overloaded as necessary.
User interfaces must be custom built for each application, communicating with a collection of
service components through their OAI interfaces for data access i.e.Search and other extended
OAI interfaces for data processing i.e. Review.
Libraries Role
Many scholar-authors have already become active partners with their library, in playing a
visible role in making research more accessible. For libraries, the reduction in budgets in real
terms has seriously affected their ability to deliver access to the global knowledge base for their
researchers. As such, libraries have a vested interest.
Why Libraries?
Information managers are the logical administrators of institutional archives and are now taking a lead
role in their implementation. Their professional skills and expertise map to the e-Print support and
maintenance profile:
Positioned in the scholarly communication process
Recorders of institutional scientific output
Publishers on behalf of the institution
Collection and dissemination of scholarly resources
Deliverers of seamless systems, e-Resources etc
Resource discovery mechanisms in digital environment
Database expertise
Records management
Work with metadata and preservation
Apply international standards uniformly
IPR issues
Central service providers
Interact at all levels within the institution
Network culture
End user of free research corpus

Components
Repositories and Harvesting
The words Open Archive frequently conjure up images of information access without any
associated cost or restriction. While this is a goal for many proponents of the OAI, it places too
many restrictions on DLs that want to conform to OAI standards. So, the OAI defines an Open
Archive (OA) simply as being an archive that implements the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting,
thus allowing remote archives to access its metadata using an open standard.
A Repository is often used as a synonym for an OA. In the traditional DL context, a repository is a
collection of digital objects, but in the context of the OAI, it has to be network accessible and it has
to support the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
Metadata and Data
The question of what to harvest is a contentious issue for many, as it is not obvious whether an
archive should be sharing its metadata, its digital objects, or both. There are advantages to
exchanging complete digital objects since that will support operations like full-text search of text
documents. However, in most instances DLs need only harvest metadata in order to provide search,
classification, and related services. This approach was adopted by the OAI, with the implicit
understanding that the metadata will contain pointers to the concrete rendering of digital objects.
Indexing, Resource Discovery, Searching, and Retrieving
Indexes may be centralized or distributed. They may be two-level, allowing a resource discovery phase
to proceed to find what source(s) should be included in the second (lower) level search. Indexes also
may have multiple parts, such as when a document has a text, image, audio, or video part. Content-
based indexing of multimedia information generally involves identifying and assessing features that
characterize the DOs, whether they involve concepts, n-grams, words, keywords, descriptors,
phonemes, textures, color histograms, links, or user ratings.
Most commonly, searching in a digital library involves an information retrieval (IR) system or search
engine. In some cases a database management system is used instead or underlies the IR system. In any
case, retrieval will be more effective if a suitable scheme is used to combine the various types of
evidence available [18], to indicate if a DO might be relevant with respect to the query that is used to
express the users information need.



Linking, Annotating, and Browsing
Once a Digital Object (DO) is found, it often is appropriate to follow links from it to cited works. Further,
notes can be recorded as annotations and linked back to the works, so they can be recalled later or
shared with colleagues as part of collaborative activities. If suitable clustering is in place, other DOs that
are near a given work may be examined. Or, using a classification system appropriate for the content
domain, users may browse around in concept space and link at any point between concepts and
related DOs. Browsing also can proceed based on any of the elements in the MDO. Thus, dates,
locations, publishers, contributing artists, language, and other aspects may be considered to explore the
collection or refine a search.
Document formats
Open source protocols are available to assist in conversion from non supported formats. Unless carefully
checked, HTML conversion from Word is unsatisfactory, so decisions on deleting some of the default
formats might also need to be made. At present e-Print archiving addresses the activity of depositing an
item rather than addressing preservation strategies. Archive managers will want however to investigate
the application of principles stated in the Open Archive Information System reference model for
strategies on long-term accessibility, reliability and integrity.

Subject Index / Thesaurus
Some e-Print open archives have decided not to use a subject classification scheme but to rely on
keywords in title and the abstract and additional natural language keywords added by the depositor.
These decisions must be made before starting to deposit papers since it is difficult to change once
content is loaded.
Policy considerations
There are permutations in the institutional e-Print open archive model, from total self archiving by the
author to full mediated archiving by the archive team. Taking responsibility for the institutional archive
will task the team with addressing the administrative and operational load, definitive authentication of
depositors, quality control of the metadata and breadth of collection policy. Defining the institutional
policy on copyright; and standards for long-term preservation are areas of deep discussion.