Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries
Michael Ehrismann
Project management Metadata server
+41 44 632 64 10
michael.ehrismann@library.ethz.ch

Consolidation of the metadata servers

Within the Project "E-Archiving" of the Consortium the Open Source Software CDS Invenio was used to set up a metadata server. The server is collecting metadata from institutional repositories of Swiss universities and makes them available to users for a common search. Transfer of metadata is effected via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Documents themselves and their full text remain on the original server and are requested from there when required.

For documents in institutional repositories, this metadata server represents an intermediate step on the road towards their full integration into the search capabilites of "e-lib.ch". Within the proposed project metadata of further repositories are to be integrated. With servers which are already OAI-PMH enabled, this can usually be effected relatively fast. Where this prerequisite is missing, more time and effort is to be expected.

In the medium term, such a separate metadata server should become obsolete as soon as the seamless integration of dispersed content from institutional repositories into the search tools of "e-lib.ch" will be realized to enable straightforward access by users.

The project is finished after the integration of the data into "swissbib".