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EThOS. A National OAI and Digitisation Service for e-theses in the United Kingdom Chris Awre EThOSnet Web Services Day June 2009. What is EThOS?. EThOS feasibility study, 2005-6 JISC project to develop a pilot OAI service provider for e-theses
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EThOS A National OAI and Digitisation Service for e-theses in the United Kingdom Chris Awre EThOSnet Web Services Day June 2009
What is EThOS? • EThOS feasibility study, 2005-6 • JISC project to develop a pilot OAI service provider for e-theses • Also tasked with developing a financially viable and sustainable business model • EThOSnet project, 2007-9 • JISC project to develop a live service • British Library EThOS service • Live since 20th January 2009 • Six-fold increase in demand
EThOS Toolkit • Dual role • Advocate e-theses and how to implement the necessary procedures and technology • Establish a common process that allows an OAI service provider to work over the many varied institutional repositories providing e-theses • Information provided by EThOS… • …but also sought from the community • http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/
EThOS hub • Based on a customised version of EPrints 2 for storing the e-theses • Using the ARC harvester • The user interface is derived from BLDirect • Bespoke development for admin interface • Bespoke prototype development of web service submission tool • Re-use and modification of existing software saved considerable time and money
Technical futures • Compound e-theses • EThOS can deal with multiple files, but not when packaged • OAI-ORE may assist here • SWAP not that helpful • Identifiers • Key to persisting relationships across repositories • Current identifiers are unique, but not de-referenceable • This will change when EThOS metadata becomes harvestable
Web Services • ‘Web Services’ encompasses many different potential technologies • No fixed agreement on their scope • OAI often considered a web service • Focus of this workshop is primarily on SOAP and REST-based Web Services • Current interest – a technology fashion? • Recognising there is a spectrum of uses for these • But also… • Why Web Services? • Sharing experiences of use
Web Services & repositories • In context, can repositories benefit from using Web Services? • For their own immediate purposes e.g., deposit • For their interaction with other systems • For federated repository services • Existing EThOS architecture does not make use of Web Service technologies • Deposit tool prototype not developed further • Today is informing EThOS, but hopefully of benefit to repository development generally
Thank you • Chris Awre • c.awre@hull.ac.uk • Kevin O’Leary • kevin.oleary@imperial.ac.uk • EThOS • http://ethos.bl.uk • ethos-help@bl.uk • http://www.ethos.ac.uk