originally: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/mswitch/5_colis.htm
The goal of this Metadata Switch project is to produce SRW/U and OAI tools for the COLIS project.
COLIS (Collaborative Online Learning and Information Services) is a project of the Australian national government focusing on the development of collaborative online learning and information services. It is a broad demonstration/experiment in integrating e-learning components.
OCLC is a member of the COLIS Consortium, which consists of five Australian universities, systems providers, and IMS Global Learning Consortium.
A component of the COLIS architecture is a searchable repository of LOM (Learning Object Metadata) records. (See figure 1.) These records are produced by institutions as part of the production of Learning Objects, but they are rarely made searchable by those institutions.
The Office of Research will produce a variant on its existing OAI server that will enable those institutions to offer their LOM records to OAI harvesters. OCLC will harvest LOM records and make them available via the SRU search and retrieval protocol.
OCLC researcher Ralph LeVan is harvesting metadata for learning objects, and working with COLIS to develop systems and protocols for communicating and transferring metadata between the disparate systems that can potentially supply or use learning objects and other resources in online learning systems.
LOM records will be added to the database as they are made available.
Other types of Learning Object metadata will be examined for suitability for inclusion in the repository.