OAI Data Provider

How to Harvest From NSDL

Access to the NSDL OAI data provider:

• Harvest using baseURL: http://nsdl.org/oai
• Use the OAI Explorer page to explore the data provider from a web browser

The NSDL OAI data provider has the following characteristics:

• The NSDL repository contains collections of educational resources, annotations, paradata (use data), and a collection of collection metadata (metadata about the collections). Each collection in the NSDL repository is made available as an OAI set.
  • Sets/collections are added and removed from the repository occasionally (a few each quarter or so).
  • Collections of educational resource metadata make up the majority of the repository. All educational resource metadata sets/collections are available in nsdl_dc and oai_dc formats and some are also available in lar format.
  • The contents of some sets/collections change frequently (approximately monthly), while others remain relatively static.
  • No deduping is performed in the data provider. It is common to see multiple metadata records that describe the same resource URL, especially across different sets/collections.
  • View the list of available OAI sets/collections using the OAI ListSets request.
• XML formats that are available from the repository include:
  • Educational resource metadata: All educational resource metadata are available in nsdl_dc and oai_dc formats and some are also available in lar format.
  • Annotations: Available in comm_anno format.
  • Paradata: Available in comm_para format.
  • Collection metadata: Available in dlese_collect format. Within each dlese_collect record resides a nested ncsCollectionRecord element that contains detailed information about each NSDL collection. All collection metadata are grouped under setSpec 'collect'.
  • Additional XML formats may become available in the future.
  • View the list of available XML formats and schemas using the OAI ListMetadataFormats request.

Tools for Harvesting

A number of open source tools are available for working with OAI-PMH:

• The jOAI tool may be used to harvest metadata to a file system.
• The OAI tools page lists additional tools that are available.

OAI-PMH Documentation

To learn about the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, see the following:

• OAI-PMH Documentation

Support

For questions and more information, please send your inquiry to NSDL via the contact form