OAI-PMH Primer

This section gives a basic overview of the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). For more detailed information, please refer to the protocol specification.

Glossary of Important OAI-PMH Concepts

Repository
A repository is a server-side application that exposes metadata via OAI-PMH.
Harvester
OAI-PMH client applications like Sickle are called harvesters.
record
A record is the XML-encoded container for the metadata of a single publication item. It consists of a header and a metadata section.
header
The record header contains a unique identifier and a datestamp.
metadata
The record metadata contains the publication metadata in a defined metadata format.
set
A structure for grouping records for selective harvesting.
harvesting
The process of requesting records from the repository by the harvester.

OAI Verbs

OAI-PMH features six main API methods (so-called “OAI verbs”) that can be issued by harvesters. Some verbs can be combined with further arguments:

Identify
Returns information about the repository. Arguments: None.
GetRecord

Returns a single record. Arguments:

  • identifier (the unique identifier of the record, required)
  • metadataPrefix (the prefix identifying the metadata format, required)
ListRecords

Returns the records in the repository in batches (possibly filtered by a timestamp or a set). Arguments:

  • metadataPrefix (the prefix identifying the metadata format, required)
  • from (the earliest timestamp of the records, optional)
  • until (the latest timestamp of the records, optional)
  • set (a set for selective harvesting, optional)
  • resumptionToken (used for getting the next result batch if the number of records returned by the previous request exceeds the repository’s maximum batch size, exclusive)
ListIdentifiers
Like ListRecords but returns only the record headers.
ListSets
Returns the list of sets supported by this repository. Arguments: None
ListMetadataFormats
Returns the list of metadata formats supported by this repository. Arguments: None

Metadata Formats

OAI interfaces may expose metadata records in multiple metadata formats. These formats are identified by so-called “metadata prefixes”. For instance, the prefix oai_dc refers to the OAI-DC format, which by definition has to be exposed by every valid OAI interface. OAI-DC is based on the 15 metadata elements specified in the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set.

Note

Sickle only supports the OAI-DC format out of the box. See the section on customizing for information on how to extend Sickle for retrieving metadata in other formats.