Disruptive Library Technology Jester

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.”

I’ve been following the discussion by Stu Weibel on his blog about the relationship between Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Dublin Core Abstract Model (DCAM), and I think I’m as confused as ever. It comes as a two part posting with comments by Andy Powell Pete Johnston (apologies, Pete), Mikael Nilsson, Jonathan Rochkind, and Ed Summers. Jonathan’s and Ed’s comments describe the same knowledge black hole that I’ve been facing as well; in Ed’s words: “The vocabulary I get–the DCAM is a tougher nut for me to crack.”

The Technical Committee and Liaison Group of the OAI Object Reuse and Exchange effort met last week in New York City to hammer out face-to-face some of the last remaining issues before work could begin on a draft specifications document. In preparation for that meeting, we worked on a white paper that is officially called “Compound Information Objects: The OAI-ORE Perspective” — but it might more accurately be called “Thoughts on Compound Documents”. The outline of the white paper looks like this:

1. Introduction and Motivation
2. An OAI-ORE Interoperability Layer for Compound Objects
3. Exposing Logical Boundaries in the Web Graph