The first production version of the Object Reuse and Exchange from the Open Archives Initiative was published today. In the words of the release announcement, ORE provides “the foundation for applications and services that can visualize, preserve, transfer, summarize, and improve access to the aggregations that people use in their daily Web interaction: including multiple page Web documents, multiple format documents in institutional repositories, scholarly data sets, and online photo and music collections.”

This release of the 1.0 version features a newly rewritten primer as well as updated user guides (Resource Map Implementation in Atom, Resource Map Implementation in RDF/XML, Resource Map Implementation in RDFa, HTTP Implementation, and Resource Map Discovery) and core specifications (Abstract Data Model and ORE Vocabulary). There are also Tools and Additional Resources, an ORE Google Group and a ORE Wiki.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://foresite.cheshire3.org/wiki/ on January 28th, 2011.

Last Friday, Herbert Van de Sompel posted a message to various mailing lists about a proposed revision to the serialization of OAI-ORE into Atom. The proposal by Michael Nelson, Robert Sanderson, and Herbert has two key components:

• To express an ORE Aggregation at the level of an Atom Entry, rather than (as in the current draft) at the level of an Atom Feed
• To convey ORE-specific relationships types using add-ons/extensions, rather than by making ORE-specific interpretations of pre-existing Atom relationship types

Here is the text of Herbert’s message:

Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:16:24 -0600
From: Herbert Van de Sompel <herbertv@lanl.gov>
Subject: Proposal to revise ORE Atom serialization

As a result of feedback that was provided over the past few weeks, both via the ORE Google list, in private communications, and via the blogosphere, we have made a bold move to compile a Discussion Document that outlines a proposal for a significantly different ORE Atom serialization.

The Discussion Document is at <http://www.openarchives.org/ore/documents/atom_revision_20080801.html>.

We understand this proposal comes very late in the ORE process that is expected to deliver 1.0 specification by the end of September 2008. Your feedback to this proposal is absolutely crucial. Please use the ORE Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/oai-ore) to share your insights.

Thanks! Greetings.

Herbert Van de Sompel

Comments to this blog entry are closed since they are best redirected to the Google Groups list.

As a result of discussions coming from the OAI-ORE open meeting in Baltimore in the first week of March, the document editors released a new version of the ORE alpha specifications (labeled “0.3″) earlier this month to coincide with the open meeting at Southampton, UK. In a message to the technical committee, Herbert Van de Sompel summarized the changes as:

• Data Model: changes in the relationship between Resource Map and Aggregation; introduction of a solution regarding the reference in context; revised approach regarding nesting aggregations.
• Atom serialization: Significant revision of the mapping from the ORE Model to Atom.
• Introduction of an ORE Primer (formerly called the data model overview)
• Introduction of a document describing implementation issues regarding HTTP URIs for Aggregations and Resource Maps.
• RDF serialization document: This document was first made available in alpha 0.2. It deals with RDF/XML but also RDFa that can, for example be used, in splash pages.

Comments are still welcome, and the OAI-ORE discussion list has been quite active the past few weeks. The document editors are aiming for a beta release of the specification in mid-May.