Editing OAI

[[Category:Howto]]
[[Category:OpenAccess]]
We would also encourage you to configure the OAI support for your archive and register it.

====Configuring====

The setting for OAI are held in the <tt>oai.pl</tt> file, in the <tt>eprints3/archives/<archive id>/cfg/cfg.d/</tt> directory.  This is a perl file, but don't let that daunt you. Some of the settings are set to sensible defaults.  This guide covers the essentials.  Feel free to use your favourite text editor instead of pico.

At the command prompt, backup then open the file:
 >cd /opt/eprints3/archive/<archive id>/cfg/cfg.d
 >cp oai.pl oai.backup
 >pico oai.pl

The following need to be changed:

<strong>The archive ID</strong>.  This needs to be unique, so check that it doesn't already exist at http://www.openarchives.org/.

Find the following line in oai.pl:
 $oai->{v2}->{archive_id} = "generic.eprints.org";
And change generic.eprints.org to something which identifies your repository.

<strong>Content Description</strong>.  What does your repository contain?  Write a description, then find the lines:
 $oai->{content}->{"text"} = latin1( <<END );
 OAI Site description has not been configured.
 END
Do not modify the first or last line in any way.  Simply put your new text in the place of the middle line.  This text can be as many lines as you wish, but it <em>must not</em> contain the word "END" at the start of a line.

<strong>Policies</strong>
Next you need to define a number of policies which will define how your repository may be used.  It may be helpful for you to visit http://www.opendoar.org/tools/en/policies.php, which has a step-by-step process to create these policies.  It will even output EPrints 3 configuration code, which you can then copy and paste into the oai.pl file.  These policies are:

* Metadata Policy
* Data Policy
* Submission Policy

These are updated in exactly the same way as the <strong>Content Description</strong> section.  Just look for the following lines:

*$oai->{metadata_policy}->{"text"} = latin1( <<END );
*$oai->{data_policy}->{"text"} = latin1( <<END );
*$oai->{submission_policy}->{"text"} = latin1( <<END );

====Registering====

Once you register your archive (at http://www.openarchives.org) various search systems will be able to collect the metadata (titles, authors, abstract etc.) and allow more people to find records in your archive.

See http://www.openarchives.org/ for more information on the OAI protocol. For more information setting up the OAI interface archive see the section in this documentation about Configuring an Archive.