How to provide collection descriptions to ANDS
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There are two major steps in the process of providing descriptions of research collections and associated information:
- Creating the records, whether manually, or by processing information from another source.
- Transferring the records to Research Data Australia.
The content of the records is covered in the Content Providers Guide. The rest of this page provides a quick, technical overview of the steps in generating and transferring RIF-CS records.
Getting records into Research Data Australia
Getting records into RDA can be as simple as creating them manually online. But a better way is to set up an ongoing "feed" of records that can be regularly harvested, capturing the latest updates.
If you need access to the ANDS Registry, please refer to Getting an ANDS Online Services Account for more information.
Creating records
To learn more about providing a record to ANDS and understand RIF-CS you can use the ANDS Demonstration Environment (demo) . RIF-CS information is available here http://ands.org.au/resource/rif-cs.html.
Most organisations will want to use software to generate RIF-CS records, processing information from other sources. This task can be made easier using the ANDS RIF-CS Java API.
Direct harvest
Direct harvest means using software to generate RIF-CS records in an .xml file which is retrieved by the ANDS harvester. You must host the .xml file on an externally accessible website. Then, ask your ANDS Liaison Officer to create a data source that your records will be harvested into.
This method is suitable provided the generated file is small (for example, one or two megabytes).
OAI-PMH harvest
Setting up an OAI-PMH provider to transfer the files allows more advanced synchronisation of content between your system and Research Data Australia. There are several ways to do this. See:
- Implementing a RIF-CS OAI-PMH Data Provider (overview)
- Configuring jOAI to support RIF-CS (solution using jOAI)
