Main points

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Poster used for the Open Repository meeting 2008

ORI-OAI provides solutions to manage the profusion of digital materials in of higher education and research institutions: it helps to ensure coordinated and comprehensive management of intellectual production and to keep sustainable and simple access to it.

Objectives

ORI-OAI was designed to multiply uses of digital ressources and to address two complementary objectives: valorization of digital heritage and building of networks of documentation gates.

  • The finality of development of digital intellectual assets is to capitalize the mass of knowledge produced by each researcher and teacher, at any level (scientific, economic, managerial ...). It is materialized by the creation of an institutional repository, which is a living base for all documents that are both used daily and important enough to be preserved in the long term.
  • Building networks of communicating gates designed to exchange and share digital assets of each connected institution with local and international partners, globally or on a particular theme, and paid or free depending on access rights.

ORI-OAI, the missing link

As there is no tool that meets the needs of digital asset management of universities, some institutions have joined their forces to create ORI-OAI, a tool specifically designed to manage an institutional repository and thus to enhance the digital heritage of universities in its entirety for all types of resources.

ORI-OAI is not one more tool, but rather the tool that allows to make the  link both between all other tools and between different components of an institution or a project. ORI-OAI can integrate with all other tools present in the universities: it does not replace them, but it increases values ​​and uses of their datas. It allows exchanges of documents (learning objects, thesis, scholarly works, scientific publications, records management) and facilitates collaborative works for referencing and indexing, in compliance with universities and libraries standards (not only Dublin Core, but LOM, TEF, CDM... too).

In practice, ORI-OAI is a free and open source system that can:

  • search and manage all digital documents produced by academic institutions,
  • share them with other institutions,
  • develop a professional indexing,
  • archive, publish and diffuse documents and make them available on local and remote access, in respect of intellectual rights and in user-friendly interfaces.

Some features have long been available, because ORI-OAI is a project that has a long history, and new ones will be available soon.

ORI-OAI as a project

ORI-OAI can be implemented easily in a single service, a little documentation cell, a laboratory or a library.

However, it is best to implemente it as widely as possible within institutions to increase uses of metadatas, to reduce duplications and to benefit from the best skills of each actor. Generally speaking, the development of exchanges of digital documents and the valorization of digital assets are objectives that are achieved by global projects.

In fact, within each institution, many actors are involved in the production of digital content (teachers, researchers, students, teaching services...) and many others manage and develop them (library, central documentation service, information systems...). ORI-OAI helps all of them to work together and to make professionaly indexed and qualified informations and documents available everywhere.

In addition, ORI-OAI can be implemented as a framework for inter-institutional project, such in the case of digital and virtual universities (national, thematic or regional) or for the creation of national archives.