Tips on using the OAI-PMH service ?

alcoma

Hello,
Wondering if it is possible to use the OAI-PMH service in Collective Access with OCLC's WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway ?
Anyone have experiences with setting up the exporter and using the OAI-PMH service in C/A they can share ?
Thank you.

monica

alcoma should be able to be harvested by OCLC, information here on creating the metadata crosswalks for them. https://help.oclc.org/Metadata_Services/Digital_Collection_Gateway/Use_the_Digital_Collection_Gateway/020Collection_configuration_and_metadata_crosswalking
What is it you need to know in particular?

monica

alcoma CA documentation is here https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/providence/user/export/oaipmh_provider

alcoma

Thanks Monica. I just don't know where to begin; like creating the DublinCore exporter needed by C/A ? Is there a template for that ? Is this service enabled simply by setting it in the config doc ?

monica

alcoma there is no Dublin core XML export template publicly available. I could find one for you when I’m at my computer. Obviously, each collection is different, so the export crosswalk will be different for your collection.
You will need to edit the conf to enable the OAI-PMH interface to work too.

alcoma

That would be super helpful if you can find a template to share. Thanks.

monica

alcoma

oai-dc-sample.xlsx

Here is an example OAI_DC export. You will need to update it for your own purposes.

alcoma

Thank you so much! I had started a mapping but was in the dark for setting needed "options". This will be a helpful reference!

alcoma

I configured the oai_provider.conf and uploaded the exporter. I tried accessing via http://www.mydomain.org/service.php/OAI/dc or
https://mydomain.com/service.php/OAI/dc?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc
[using our url]
but in either case I get the error:
{"ok":false,"errors":{"message":"Invalid controller path","extensions":{"category":null},"locations":null}}

monica

alcoma What version of CA are you using?

alcoma

Application version 2.0
Schema revision 197

monica

alcoma is the ‘mydomain.org’ your providence install or pawtucket? Needs to be providence.

alcoma

Ah. I had no idea it had to point to the providence url.
I just tried with the .../service.php/OAI/dc and received this:

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

<error code="badVerb">No verb specified.</error>

monica

alcoma it’s the second url you pasted above with the ‘?verb=ListRecords’

seth

You will need to provide a valid OAI-PMH verb. See https://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html#ProtocolMessages

alcoma

Is the verb set in the conf file ? Ex:

# Maximum number of records to return in a list (ListRecords or ListIdentifiers verbs)
maxRecordsPerRequest = 50

alcoma

Oh. I tried that url as well and was able to preview object records in the xml structure. I'm guessing that is good and I can edit my mapper accordingly ... Though I do see this at the beginning of some of the fields (randomly, not specific to any) and not sure what it means, though I would guess some formatting/character issue ?:
<![CDATA
Ex: <dc:title>
<![CDATA[ An Evening of Music with Steve Reich & Musicians at the UC Berkeley Museum, (Nov. 7, 1970) ]]>
</dc:title>

monica

alcoma The <![CDATA[]]> surrounding the data is fine. It is put around any content that has non-standard characters (like the parentheses in yours).

alcoma

Thanks Monica, I just discovered that too ...
So far so good, it was pretty easy to test and add the service url into the OCLC digital gateway.
Thanks again for the helpful tips.