OAI-PMH for dummies : how to build an institutional repository with limited resources? A case study.

Chalon P.  2011.  OAI-PMH for dummies : how to build an institutional repository with limited resources? A case study. INFORUM 2011; 2011 Brussels, Belgium. [Oral presentation]

Open standards support information exchange, but also prepare development of the next generation of the Web (Semantic Web). OAI-PMH has its roots in 1991 with the development of e-prints repositories (so-called archives), and supported the development of institutional repositories. Thanks to OAI-PMH, those repositories are inter-operable, allowing to automatically exchange meta data. In 2006, KCE, a recently created Belgian federal institution, evaluated the opportunity to set up an institutional repository that complies to OAI-PMH protocol. Due to limited resources, creating a specific document repository was rejected ; the use of the library workflow, based on the Integrated Library management System, was identified as most cost effective option. In 2010, the Open Source ILS used at KCE (PMB) gained the OAI-PMH server functionality ; allowing KCE to expose her reports to any meta data harvester, but also to start building domain specific meta repositories (aggregators). In this session, we will describe the process of creating an institutional repository based on the Integrated Library management System. We will also discuss the challenge of building meta-repositories, with Belgian federal and European examples.