ANDS Services - FAQ
Questions covered
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What's the difference between the harvest methods - 'Direct' and 'Harvester Direct'?
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I want to integrate Identify My Data with my software. How do I access this service?
1. I'm trying to access Register My Data/Publish My Data / Identify My Data and my userid/password won't work. What's wrong?
Access to these ANDS online services is via a username and password that are valid within the Australian Access Federation (AAF). If you are unfamiliar with the AAF there is an excellent video animation explaining how this works at http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/about/
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From the Online Services 'Login' page at: https://services.ands.org.au/home/login.php choose the 'login using Australian Access Federation (AAF) Pilot credentials' option from the dropdown menu.
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If you have previously been using the ANDS DEMO environment during a training course, or the ANDS SANDBOX environment while developing your collection descriptions, you will have been using the 'Login using local credentials' method. This local credentials method is not available in the PRODUCTION environment.
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Once you have made this selection, you will be taken to the AAF 'WAYF' (Where Are you From) screen. This screen is presented to you from the AAF, not from ANDS.
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If your home institution is a member of the AAF, you can choose your home institution from the drop down list and enter the usual username and password that you use to access services within your institution. Some institutions choose to be members of the AAF but not to identify individuals uniquely. This kind of identification won't work for ANDS services. We need to know that you are you, and not just an anonymous person affiliated with a particular institution, or we can't give you access to your own records. The easiest way to find out if your home institution credentials will work for you is to try it out.
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Please do not tick either of the checkboxes that are offered on this WAYF screen. If you do tick these boxes and later need to change your institution, you will need to clear your browser cache before you can successfully login.
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If your home institution is not a member of the AAF, or does not identify you uniquely, then ARCS will provide you with an identity that you can use to access AAF services, including ANDS services. You can apply for an ARCS identity here: https://idp.arcs.org.au/idp_reg If you need to use an ARCS Identity, then you will need to choose 'ARCS IdP' (ARCS Identity Provider) from the WAYF dropdown box, regardless of what your home institution is. It is a good idea to make a note of your ARCS username and password, since as you may not use these frequently it is easy to forget them.
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If you are using an ARCS Identity to access AAF services and you have forgotten your password you will need to contact ARCS for a password reset, from this web page: https://idp.arcs.org.au/idp_reg. ANDS cannot reset ARCS passwords.
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If you continue to have difficulties accessing ANDS services, please email services@ands.org.au
2. Should I use Register My Data or Publish My Data?
Register My Data allows automated bulk harvest of rich collection descriptions into the ANDS Collections Registry. It is intended for use by institutions. There is some IT technical setup required before an institution can utilise Register My Data, and collection descriptions need to be mapped to the RIF-CS schema before they can be harvested.
Publish My Data allows manual entry of simple individual collection descriptions into the ANDS Collections Registry. It is intended for use by individual researchers whose institutions or organisations are currently unable to utilise Register My Data. There is no setup time or mapping required to utilise Publish My Data.
3. What's the difference between the harvest methods - 'Direct' and 'Harvester Direct'?
'Direct' is a single, one-off harvest. In internet terms, it is a simple HTTP GET.
'Harvester Direct' allows you to schedule a series of 'Direct' harvests, at a set frequency, say weekly.
ANDS preferred harvest method is the third, 'Harvest OAI-PMH' option. The OAI-PMH protocol allows fast, bulk harvests and includes features like resumption tokens and exception reporting. To use this option data providers need to have OAI-PMH capability. Most repository software includes an OAI-PMH data provider. Free, open-source OAI-PMH solutions are also available. More information on implementing an OAI-PMH data provider is available from: http://ands.org.au/resource/rifcs-provider.html
4. I'm entering a record into the ANDS Collections registry using Register My Data. None of the types in a vocabulary list properly describe my data. What should I do?
The vocabulary lists (RIF-CS 1.0.1 vocabulary list, RIF-CS 1.2.0 vocabulary list ) for Register My Data are not closed. Rather, you can choose to use your own types if none of those in the vocabulary fits your data. These are called 'user-defined types'. However, because consistency in types enables some deep search techniques, it is good practice to use the existing types where possible. If you do decide to choose a user-defined type, please email services@ands.org.au to let us know what the type is. We'll include it in the vocabulary if it is likely that others would want to use it too.
5. I want to integrate Identify My Data with my software. How do I access this service?
The technical documentation for this machine-to-machine (M2M) service can be found here: http://services.ands.org.au/documentation/pids/pids_text.pdf
You will need to email services@ands.org.au with the IP address of the machine that will be hosting the application you wish to integrate, and an authDomain of your choosing. ANDS will then provide you with a key for the Test service. Only applications within the authDomain and originating from the designated IP address will be able to use the key.
It is important to give some thought to an appropriate, future-proofed, authDomain. If you make this domain too narrow, business-as-usual IT infrastructure changes/upgrades may make your key unusable. Your institutional domain (e.g. anu.edu.au) may be too broad, but is worth considering.
Once testing has been successfully conducted, ANDS will send you an Agreement form for signature. When the signed Agreement form is returned, we will issue you with a key for the Production service.
It is possible to test using one IP address (say, from a local Test server) and to use another for Production.
6. I am a Data Source Administrator and I need to delete a record in the ANDS Registry. How should I go about this?
If you manually entered the record into the Registry that you now want to delete, then you can login to ANDS Online Services, navigate to the record using the 'Search' function, open the record and use the 'Delete' button at the bottom of the page. You will only have authorisation to delete records for which you are the Data Source Administrator.
If the record was harvested into the Registry, then you will need to remove the record from the harvest point at your institution. If you just delete the record from the registry, next time ANDS harvests your records the record will appear in the Registry again.
First delete the record at the harvest point, then login to ANDS Online Services, navigate to your data source and use the 'Test' button to ensure that your harvest is functioning correctly. You should check that the activity log shows a 'SUCCESS' message, and that the number of objects found in SOURCE DATA is the number of objects you expected to be available for harvest. Once the test harvest is able to be performed successfully use the 'Clear' button to clear all the records from your data source from the registry, and use 'Import' to trigger a new harvest.
7. Will RIF-CS ever change? Who decides?
ANDS has committed to restrict structural updates of RIF-CS to a single update each year. (Additions to the vocabulary can happen at any time.) This is because each structural change imposes a cost on data providers.
Information on the 2010 update (RIF-CS 1.2.0) is available on the ANDS website.
The 2010 updates were based on the most common issues and requests from ANDS data providers. In the future a governance committee will be convened to provide a collaborative forum for ANDS participants to discuss proposed changes to RIF-CS.
For more information on any of the above FAQs, please contact services@ands.org.au
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Australia License.
