The DRIVER team has developed a tool, whose task is to check the degree of conformance with the DRIVER guidelines (the current rules comply with Guidelines version 2.0). The implementation of the guidelines combined with the DRIVER technical infrastructure, allow DRIVER to provide new and innovative services - including the DRIVER search service - for users and the repository community as a whole. Implementing the guidelines is straightforward and assistance is available from the DRIVER helpdesk.

Except for the guidelines, the validation tool provides verification for OAI-PMH repositories and also suggests some good practices for OAI-PMH content publishing used in efficient harvesting. Each validation assigns a score to the processed repository/set which, although in itself is not authoratitive, gives a rough indication to our technical people how to assess the results. The validation tool has the following characteristics:

• web-based - open to all repository managers or country correspondents (provided they have an account with DRIVER)
• rule based - users are able to select a subset of rules for specific validation aspects
• track history - users may view their past validations and see how their repository evolves
• dynamic - supports online rule description/definition so that the DRIVER consortium can update rules according to the feedback received
• extendable - when the technologies are mature the validation will move beyond OAI-PMH data repositories
• to be fully integrated with DRIVER harvesting - acts as feedback to the DRIVER harvesting tool for better data homogenization/access (in the future)

You may start exploring the current DRIVER validation tool by selecting an option from the Validation menu.

The development of the validor tool was undertaken by the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, NKUA in close association with SURF and the University of Bielefeld Library.