The Open Archives Initiative has issued Conveying Rights Expressions about Metadata in the OAI-PMH Framework, a new Implementation Guidelines document aimed at clarifying the important issue of how to express rights information about harvested metadata in OAI-PMH.
From the document:
Data providers might want to associate rights expressions with the metadata to indicate how it may be used, shared, and modified after it has been harvested. This specification defines how rights information pertaining to the metadata should be included in responses to OAI-PMH requests. The described technique:
- Is based on delivering rights expressions that apply to metadata included in OAI-PMH responses. It uses the optional containers that have been defined as part of the OAI-PMH specification. As a result, no changes to the protocol are made, and compatibility with all existing OAI-PMH implementations is maintained.
- Is not tied to any particular rights expression language. This document makes use of Creative Commons and GNU licenses, but the use of these specific languages is for illustrative purposes only.
Essential reading for OAI-PMH geeks.
