Possible Alma OAI Errors
- Product: RapidILL
The following errors may be returned in the OAI response. The below examples relate to a sample base URL http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.c...1_INST/request?.
Replace the base URL with your Alma instance’s URL when doing your testing.
- "OAI Repository definition doesnt exist for this Institution"
This means that the Alma institution for which the OAI response has been requested (EXLDEV1_INST on il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com in this example) does not have an OAI integration profile.
Use the General Configuration>External Systems>Integration Profiles menu to create an OAI integration profile
- "OAI Repository is not active for this Institution"
You have not activated the OAI integration profile –
- "Problem with url - institution code is missing"
The URL does not have an institution code. For example,
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com/view/oai/request?
Instead of
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?
- “Unauthorized access to the OAI services – please contact the system administrator for assistance”
The OAI integration profile must be defined with allowed IPs –
You may restrict the IPs to those required to Rapid ILL to harvest your data, as listed in Step 1 of the ‘Alma Holdings Harvest for RapidILL’ document, all allow access to any harvester, as shown below –
- “The repository does not support sets”
This may be a response to a ListSets request, such as http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=ListSets.
This means that you have not defined a publishing profile with an OAI output –
- See Step 3 of the ‘Alma Holdings Harvest for RapidILL’ document for details about creating the Rapid ILL required publishing profiles.
- “The request is missing required arguments.”
The URL is not complete. For example, sending a URL such as
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com: /view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=ListIdentifier
will result in this error because the Set and MetadataPrefix parameters are missing –
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com: /view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=ListIdentifiers&set=OAI&metadataPrefix=marc21
- “No Publishing profile exists for given set and metadataPrefix”
The set names that can be included in the “set” parameter of the (e.g. http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com: /view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=ListIdentifiers&set=OAI&metadataPrefix=marc21) URL are only the sets that you have defined in your OAI publishing profiles.
In this example, the error will be triggered unless the URL is such as
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com:1801/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=ListIdentifiers&set=ALL_SPEC&metadataPrefix=marc21
- “The combination of the values of the from, until, set and metadataPrefix arguments results in an empty list.”
Or
“Identifier does not exist in repository.”
The URL retrieved an empty set. This may be because a specific record was requested but it is not part of the set, or the search criteria that was defined in the URL found no results.
If you were expecting the URL to retrieve results, it may be that you set requires republishing, i.e. that the publishing profile has not run and is therefore not updated with a change that you may have expected to already be published.
- “The value of identifier is illegal in this repository.”
This will typically be the result of a GetRecord request that is using a non valid identifier.
The record identifier is the record MMS ID, prefixed by the schema, the delimiter and the repository identifier.
For example -
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:urm_publish:9912932700121&metadataPrefix=marc21
is an invalid URL that will trigger this error in the above captured OAI integration profile.
The correct URL should be
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:alma.EXLDEV1_INST:9912932700121&metadataPrefix=marc21
- The metadata format identified by the value metadataPrefix is not supported by the repository.
This indicates an error in the metadataPrefix element of the URL. The allowed metadata prefix is defined on your publishing profile.
The metadata prefix must also be allowed on the output format that you have selected for the OAI integration profile -
- “The value of identifier is illegal in this repository.”
The identifier that was supplied in the URL is not of a valid form. Typically, there is an error in the {schema+delimiter+repository identifier+delimiter+[MMS ID]} form, for example
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com:1801/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:alma.EXLDEV1_INST9912932700121&metadataPrefix=marc21
instead of
http://il-urm08.corp.exlibrisgroup.com:1801/view/oai/EXLDEV1_INST/request?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:alma.EXLDEV1_INST:9912932700121&metadataPrefix=marc21
- Article last edited: 28-Sep-2020