OAI-Aggregator Services for Enhanced Cross-Repository Services

Cross-Repository Services operate over an Information Space obtained as the aggregation of a number of OAI-compliant Repositories. Typically, such Information Space is populated by OAI-Aggregator Services, which integrate the results of harvesting OAI-Items from the individual Repositories according to one common metadata format. This work presents an alternative aggregation process, in which special Aggregator Services (i) harvest full OAI-Items from the Repositories, i.e. not only one metadata format view, but all the OAI-Item metadata records, and (ii) enrich all harvested OAI-Items with new metadata, which uniformly describes the OAI-Item beyond Dublin Core (Item Metadata Format). The richness of such Information Space gives support for the creation of enhanced Cross-Repository Services. The European Project DRIVER, which faces the realization of a European Repository Infrastructure, adopts this technology and proves its benefits.