Roy Tenant, Metadata's Bitter Harvest, Library Journal, July 15, 2004. Excerpt: "I recently conducted my first harvest. Not pulling in corn or wheat but bibliographic records. Before long I had nearly 100,000 of them on my laptop, all describing free online resources held by five different libraries. Using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) it was a breeze --anyone could do it with the right software, of which there is much to choose from. But I could hardly believe the results....It was a complete mess. This mess is neither caused nor prevented by the harvesting protocol (OAI-PMH) and the guidelines for its use. The OAI developers specifically created an infrastructure with both a low threshold (a low barrier to implementation and use) as well as a high ceiling (the opportunity to create much richer interactions among collaborating institutions). It was brilliant, but it also sets up problems if the collaborative community of users doesn't apply a set of common guidelines and practices." (Thanks to Charles W. Bailey, Jr.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/25/2004 05:10:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
