Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)

Open Archives Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)

Much of the reason for the simplification of the metadata elements selected was to ensure the images from this collection could be harvested. That is, the Open Archives Initiative for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) does not support Dublin Core unqualified elements. It provides support for the original 15 DCMES elements. For this reason, elements such as dc.format were not qualified (i.e., refined) to include dc:format.extent, nor dc:format.medium etc.  Instead, these fields formed repetitive elements of the unqualified version.

The following elements in this collection are mapped to OAI-PMH Dublin Core fields:

  • dc:creator
  • dc:publisher
  • dc:subject (Subject Series)
  • dc:subject (TGM Headings)
  • dc:subject (Name Headings)
  • dc:title 
  • dc:description
  • dc:identifier (BPL Accession Number)
  • dc:identifier (the IMAGE itself)
  • dc:date
  • dc:format (Extent)
  • dc:format (Medium)
  • dc:format (Genre)
  • dc:rights (Rights)
  • dc:rights (License)



OAI-PMH Validation

The current harvesting protocol for the Leslie Jones Collection can be found at:

To give an instance of how this functions, and to test the verbs that initiate different request types, try using the verb IDENTIFY and LISTRECORDS, respectively:

To validate on other kinds of verbs, insert http://www.lesliejonesphotography.com/oai into one of various OAI-PMH validators:



OAI-PMH Registration

The site has been registered with the Open Archives Initiative in order that other digital library harvesting engines can include these images as part of their collections. The following provides a few details regarding OAI-PMH registration, as well as a links to

OAI-PMH registration guidelines and the link where to register the site:

A list of all the registered data provides (i.e., where this sites seeks to be):

The OAIster database is one well-known provider that attempts to harvest all OAI-PMH registered records and integrate them into one seamless resource: