Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) defines standards for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources. The OAI-ORE specification implements the ORE Model which introduces the Resource Map

Resource Map

A Resource Map is a concept of ORE Model allowing to associate an identity with compound digital objects and make assertions about their structure and semantics...

 (ReM) that makes it possible to associate an identity with aggregations of resources and make assertions about their structure and semantics.

These aggregations (sometimes called compound digital objects or compound information objects) may combine distributed resources together, and with multiple media types including text, images, data, and video. The goal of OAI-ORE is to expose the rich content in aggregations to applications that support authoring

Authoring

Authoring may refer to:* Writing, as by an author* Authoring systems, computer based systems that allow the creation of content for intelligent tutoring systems...

, deposit, exchange, visualization

Visualization

The term visualization or visualisation may refer to:* Creative visualization* Flow visualization* Geovisualization* Illustration* Information graphics, visual representations of information, data, or knowledge* Information visualization...

, reuse, and preservation

Digital preservation

Digital preservation is the set of processes, activities and management of digital information over time to ensure its long term accessibility. The goal of digital preservation is to preserve materials resulting from digital reformatting, and particularly information that is born-digital with no...

.

OAI-ORE is funded by the Mellon Foundation. Version 1.0 of the specification was released on 17 October 2008.

Introduction

The ORE standard is concerned with the description of aggregations of web resources. It defines 4 entities:

• the Aggregation itself, identified by its URI
  Úri
  Úriis a village and commune in the comitatus of Pest in Hungary....
  
   but without any corresponding concrete resource. It is a conceptual resource. Being uniquely identified it can enter into relationships with other resources, in particular aggregations of aggregation become possible.
• the Aggregated Resource: any resource part of an aggregation, identified by its URI
• the Resource Map: a resource describing an aggregation based on a set of assertions. A mandatory assertion indicates which aggregation the Resource Map itself is describing. Other assertions indicate the aggregated resource(s). Certain metadata are mandatory as well, such as the map creator. Dublin Core
  Dublin Core
  The Dublin Core metadata terms are a set of vocabulary terms which can be used to describe resources for the purposes of discovery. The terms can be used to describe a full range of web resources: video, images, web pages etc and physical resources such as books and objects like artworks...
  
  terms are used for this purpose.
• the proxy: a virtual resource acting as a proxy for a certain aggregated resource in the context of a certain aggregation. Its use is optional. A so-called lineage relationship can be established between proxy resources to trace the origin of an aggregated resource from another aggregation.

The standard accounts for the possible redundant description of the same aggregation and defines the notion of authoritative Resource Map. It also consider the notions of similar aggregations and of type of aggregated resources.

The standard is open in the sense that a Resource Map may include any additional assertions about resources.

Finally, the ORE standard builds upon the Cool URIs guideline, which discussed two strategies for not confusing a things and some representation of it.

External links

• ORE website
• ORE Google Group
• ORE Atom Resource Map Validator (currently broken, since June 2010).