A dynamic approach to make CDS/ISIS databases interoperable over the internet using the OAI protocol

Abstract

PurposeA dynamic approach to making legacy databases, like CDS/ISIS, interoperable with OAI‐compliant digital libraries (DLs).Design/methodology/approachThere are many bibliographic databases that are being maintained using legacy database systems. CDS/ISIS is one such legacy database system. It was designed and developed specifically for handling textual data. Over the years, many databases have been developed using this package. There is, however, no mechanism supported by the package for seamless interoperability of databases. The open archives initiative (OAI) addresses the issue of interoperability by using a framework to facilitate the discovery of content stored in distributed archives or bibliographic databases through the use of the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH). The protocol is becoming a de facto standard for interoperability of DLs. Many of the legacy database systems that are in use today, to the best of our knowledge, for various reasons, are not OAI‐compliant. This makes it difficult for the legacy databases to share their metadata automatically. There are two possible approaches to make legacy databases OAI‐compliant – static and dynamic. In this paper, we discuss the dynamic approach to make CDS/ISIS databases OAI‐compliant.FindingsThe dynamic approach is a simple way to make legacy databases OAI‐compliant so that they become interoperable with other OAI‐compliant DLs.Research limitations/implicationDeveloping a general‐purpose tool to make legacy databases OAI‐compliant may be difficult as the driver software needed for database connectivity may not be easily available. Also, the structure of the databases are likely be so varied that identifying the fields that make up the databases programmatically will be very challenging.Originality/valueProvides a dynamic approach to making legacy databases interoperable with OAI‐compliant libraries.