Publisher review:OAI Document Library is a document management application intended for the management and tracking of large amounts of documents in an organization. OAI Document Library is a document management application intended for the management and tracking of large amounts of documents in an organization.
The OAI Document Library (OAI-DL) helps authors maintain their documents, automatically handling versioning, workflow, and expiration notification. It provides reviewers (librarians) with updates, fast approval, and overviews of all activity.
Information in the library can be accessed using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), meaning that besides being open source, the OAI-DL is an open data application. Because it’s open data, the OAI Document Library is easy to integrate with other systems, such as the Silva CMS or any other application capable of OAI-PMH harvesting.
For organizations in the UK, the OAI-DL has specific features that help ensure compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. For example, the application supports archiving via a custom Publication Scheme, following the FOI Act guidelines.
It can help organizations in the following ways: - Internal communication in an organization about documents is enhanced as documents are all available in a central location.
- Organizations, especially public ones, have to deal with more and more legal requirements concerning retention and publication of documents. The OAI-DL can help an organization in making sure it is compliant with legal requirements surrounding documents.
- Information about documents in an organization can be accessed and published, for instance on a website.
OAI Document Library characteristicsThe main focuses of the OAI Document Library are: - It’s easy to use. Users are not exposed to many complicated screens when they just want documents to appear in the system. There’s just a single screen that takes care of everything when you put a document in the library. It’s web-based, so no custom client installation is necessary.
- It integrates with other systems. The OAI-DL is not a monolithic black box in which documents and metadata disappear and cannot be retrieved anymore, but instead is easy to integrate with other systems, such as web sites that publish its content. Features can often be added outside the library instead of having to expand the scope of the OAI-DL beyond document management itself. Web publication of documents is for instance better left to a CMS (such as Silva).
- It can be made to scale. Uploads and downloads of documents can be handled seamlessly using the sophisticated Apache integration technology Tramline.
A document life cycleThis is the typical lifecycle of a document in the OAI Document Library: - A user submits a document to the OAI-DL. A mail on the submission is sent by the DL to all authors listed for the document, and another is sent to all librarians responsible for the section in which the document was submitted.
- A librarian receives the email and knows a new document was submitted. A librarian can also see all newly submitted documents in the sections the librarian is responsible for in an overview page.
- The librarian reviews the document and can either reject or approve the document for publication. An email is sent to all authors listed for the document. An email is also sent to all librarians that manage this document’s section.
- The available date of the document determines when the document is made available. Once the document becomes available, it shows up in the OAI-PMH feed and can be harvested. External systems that publish the metadata get a link to the document.
- Documents may automatically expire or can become retracted. Documents leave information behind even when they are deleted, so that it is always possible to find out what happened to them. This is important for instance in the context of freedom of information legislation.
- Documents may need to be updated on a regular basis. The OAI-DL sends emails to authors with an advance warning that an update or review is required.
Features: - Automatic conversion service: using OpenOffice, the OAI-DL can convert Word documents into PDFs and plain text, and PDFs into plain text. The plain text version is important as it allows full-text indexing of document contents, and also makes documents more accessible to people with disabilities.
- Publication workflow: documents only become available for harvesting and download after a review process.
- Delegation of control: reviewers (librarians) can be assigned to particular sections.
- Dynamic access: authors have automatic access to all the documents that list them as an author.
- Versions: multiple versions of the same document can coexist, one public and one under preparation.
- Email reminder functionality: users receive emails of the progress of the document through the workflow.
- Expiration notification: authors will be notified in advance about documents that need updating on a specified date.
- OAI-PMH data provider: allows other systems to harvest document metadata using a standard protocol.
- Integration with the Silva CMS (using OAI-PMH).
- Fast upload and download integration with Apache using Tramline
- Easy overview screens for librarians.
- Smart file upload user interface: files need to be uploaded only once even if the rest of form needs to be amended.
- OAI Document Library is built using the powerful Zope 3 application server platform.
OAI Document Library 1.2b2 is a Python script for Organizers scripts design by infrae.com.
It runs on following operating system: Windows / Linux / Mac OS / BSD / Solaris.
Operating system:Windows / Linux / Mac OS / BSD / Solaris
OAI Document Library 1.2b2 script details 
