[Koha] Koha and OAI-PMH [and digital materials]

Mon Feb 1 15:35:47 NZDT 2016

Hi Joel,

Thanks for your email. I think I’ve sorted things out with Flo, but I wanted to come back to your email, which I’m going to cross-post to the developer listserv as well. 

I originally started working on an OAI-PMH harvester to create an automatic import of records from DSpace into Koha, so that Koha could show electronic resources in the catalogue. While having good item types, frameworks, and templates are good, I found the main problem to be the metadata quality. Dublin Core doesn’t translate very well to MARC. Although now that I’m re-reading your email… are you talking about making MARC records in Koha and then using DSpace’s OAI-PMH harvester to import metadata from Koha? Then attaching digital materials in DSpace while using Koha to maintain the metadata? That could be interesting…

I agree that Koha needs to evolve to have better support for digital materials. However, I’m not sure what you mean by “a first-class framework for URL-only item types” though. Could you elaborate on that? 

Better integration into systems like DSpace may be achieved using their evolving REST APIs, although again I’m not sure what you mean by “a user might end up checking-out some digital content stored there [DSpace? Koha?] (a record is created in the issues table) that doesn’t need to check back in”. Why would you need to check out digital content in DSpace? In my experience, content is either open to the public or limited to logged in users (as part of licensing/rights restrictions). Are you thinking of something more like hosting your own ebooks in DSpace and complying with concurrent user restrictions? That could be interesting as well, although I think the majority of that work would be done in DSpace with Koha just hooking into a DSpace API to determine if there are any “available” copies for the material that they found in the Koha catalogue. I admit I’m not super familiar with ebook DRM either, so I’m not certain how much intervention would be required for expiring “on loan” DRM protected library ebooks. 

Personally, I find most of our Koha client libraries are interested in allowing their users to find “only electronic resources” and to provide seamless access to third-party sites like EBSCO, Proquest, and other publishers that host the actual content. EBSCO have been putting work into that with the Koha-EDS plugin, although I’d like to see more done in that area, although that’s actually more a matter of digital material publishers providing authentication and API options. If they provide the hooks, we can provide the services. 

I’m curious to hear your thoughts. If you have ideas for things you’d like to see, feel free to share them. If you have a budget for sponsoring development, feel free to mention that as well. It’s actually quite an exciting time to be working on Koha as large organizations like EBSCO and the National Library of Sweden are sponsoring developments in areas like OAI-PMH harvesting (which I’m working on now), moving to ElasticSearch for search and retrieval, a new REST API, etc. Even if you don’t have the money yourself, you might propose ideas on the koha-devel listserv and see if anyone is interested in sponsoring that work. 

Cheers,

David Cook

Systems Librarian

Prosentient Systems

72/330 Wattle St, Ultimo, NSW 2007

From: Coehoorn, Joel [mailto:jcoehoorn at york.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, 27 January 2016 10:25 AM
To: David Cook <dcook at prosentient.com.au>
Cc: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz; flo.pouyenne at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Koha] Koha and OAI-PMH

It sounds like she's talking about using a program that acts kind of like a web search crawler, similar to how Googlebot operates, to push information into Koha.

If that's the case, I don't think Koha would be a good solution for this right now, though you might get something working via a z39.50 connection.

It may be that she's asking if Koha can store and serve/circulate harvested digital content directly. Again, I don't believe Koha in it's current form would be good at this. Koha does not currently provide any place to store binary files for circulation.

It may also be that she's asking if she can use Koha as a front end into something like DSpace <http://www.dspace.org/>  or Greenstone <http://www.greenstone.org/> .

If that's the case, I believe Koha can do this right now, but the setup is not yet easy or straightforward. In a nutshell, you would want to enter marc records for each item in the repository, just like you do for current materials, but you would want to use item types and a custom framework so that the material is presented well.

I would welcome improvements in Koha to support any of those scenarios. Ultimately, I think Koha needs to evolve to have better support for digital materials. At a minimum, this means a first-class framework for URL-only item types along with first-class integration into systems like DSpace, where a user might end up checking-out some digital content stored there (a record is created in the issues table) that doesn't need to check back in. As distasteful as it may be, this probably needs to also include some kind of copyright enforcement mechanism, to allow libraries to easily comply with external licensing requirements.

  <http://www.york.edu/Portals/0/Images/Logo/YorkCollegeLogoSmall.jpg> 

Joel Coehoorn
Director of Information Technology
402.363.5603
jcoehoorn at york.edu <mailto:jcoehoorn at york.edu> 

The mission of York College is to transform lives through Christ-centered education and to equip students for lifelong service to God, family, and society

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 5:04 PM, David Cook <dcook at prosentient.com.au <mailto:dcook at prosentient.com.au> > wrote:

Hi Florence,

I'm afraid that I don't understand your question.

What do you mean by "Can Koha be used to manage a digital library"?

Are you asking if Koha can show metadata records from a digital library? Or are you asking if Koha can add/update/delete records in a digital library? Or both? Or something else?

I'm currently working on an OAI-PMH harvester for Koha, but the sole intent at the moment is to harvest metadata records from other systems and import them into Koha.

David Cook
Systems Librarian
Prosentient Systems
72/330 Wattle St, Ultimo, NSW 2007

> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:08:31 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Florence <flo.pouyenne at gmail.com <mailto:flo.pouyenne at gmail.com> >
> To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz <mailto:koha at lists.katipo.co.nz> 
> Subject: [Koha] Koha and OAI-PMH
> Message-ID: <loom.20160126T160510-456 at post.gmane.org <mailto:loom.20160126T160510-456 at post.gmane.org> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Hello,
>
> Can Koha be used to manage a digital library ? With a OAI-PMH harvester ?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------

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