Technical Validation Questionnaire

 
An important role of the Open Archive Forum is sharing information about technical issues relating to open archives, and especially about implementations of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Thus the project started an online Technical Validation Questionnaire, which is an evaluation of status, experiences and future plans regarding European OAI implementations.

This long-term survey continued during approximately the period of one year and is based on the experiences with the 1st Technical Validation Questionnaire which was originally created to prepare a workshop session (see below). We asked for information about software used, implementation costs, coverage of the archive, and interoperability, experiences and expectations in different communities and in different countries. The focus of interest was on fundamental questions such as:

• Is there a common ground and therefore good conditions for cooperating and learning from each other, or are requirements so individual that it will be necessary for many isolated solutions to be developed?
• Do the existing instruments for implementation fulfill all requirements or should tools and protocols be developed to meet the needs of different communities?

Questions:    (This inquiry is final and further filling out is not possible any longer!)

• For repositories which are already OAI compatible as Data Provider
  and/or Service Provider (test implementations included)?
  
• For repositories which does not now have any OAI implementations,
  but the possibility is being considered?
  

Final Results:

• Final results of the Technical Validation Questionnaire  pdf-file, 178 KB
• Technical Validation Questionnaire - Answers as stored in the database  pdf-file, 461 KB

Interim Results (Presentations):

• Summary of first results (Lisbon, Dec. 2002)  ppt-slides, 870 KB
• Interim results (Berlin, March 2003)  ppt-slides, 910 KB
• Technical Validation (Bath, September 2003)  ppt-slides, 1248  KB

Interim Results (Summarising article):

• Open Archives Activities and Experiences in Europe. An Overview by the Open Archives Forum.
  Susanne Dobratz, Birgit Matthaei - D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 9 no 1, January 2003
  http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january03/dobratz/01dobratz.html

1st Technical Validation Questionnaire

The breakout session on technical issues at the 1st OAForum Workshop was prepared by a web-based questionnaire, that participants were asked to fill out before the workshop. The session - and the questionnaire - focused on the experiences made with existing OAI implementations and the problems, that particular demands caused. 18 people contributed to the questionnaire, 6 from Germany, 5 from Italy, 2 from Belgium, 2 from the Nederlands, 1 each from France, Sweden and the UK.

Questions:    (This inquiry is final and further filling out is not possible any longer!)

• 1st Questionnaire about the Technical Validation

Results of the first Technical Validation Questionnaire:

• Results of the 1stQuestionnaire about Technical Validation  pdf-file, 103 KB
• Presentation of the results of the 1st Questionnaire about Technical Validation  ppt-slides, 156 KB