Code4lib folks,
Thanks to everyone for help on this...It has kept me up last night thinking about...  It certainly seemed like it from the documentation at https://help.oclc.org/Metadata_Services/CONTENTdm/CONTENTdm_Administration/Collection_administration/090Export_metadata  

So I was hoping that the data structure info was in either the OAI and then it occurred to me that it might also be in the XML data. (it looks like it from the brief info in the documentation) So I had a long conversation with OCLC/ContentDm.  
I was disappointed to I found out that the "structure" of the compound images (also called the containers for those in Contentdm) that might have multiple children files is in files called #.cpd.  Those files are kept in the images folder.  The data looks like this 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<cpd>
  <type>Document</type>
  <page>
    <pagetitle>Page 1</pagetitle>
    <pagefile>253.jpg</pagefile>
    <pageptr>252</pageptr>
  </page>
  <page>
    <pagetitle>Pages 2 &amp; 3</pagetitle>
    <pagefile>254.jpg</pagefile>
    <pageptr>253</pageptr>
  </page>
  <page>
    <pagetitle>Page 4</pagetitle>
    <pagefile>255.jpg</pagefile>
    <pageptr>254</pageptr>
  </page>
</cpd>

I'm wondering how places like OCLC and DLA actually harvest the data from CONTENTdm OAI without these files.

Jill

> On Sep 13, 2021, at 4:07 AM, Jill Ellern <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Code4lib folks,
>
> I have perhaps some stupid OAI questions.  We are moving off Contentdm and onto a platform with programmers that I’m pretty sure don't know OAI and harvesting at all.  We  have been thinking that it would be simple to convert our output of metadata that comes in a text format.  However, we see now that it drops the set structure (front and back of an image for example) especially since we have some collections that have different titles for the container (root description) and the images attached.  We do see a line with cpd but with different titles, it look like we might have to identify sets in Excel.  That sounds like a big job and a pain.  I'm thinking there is a better way with OAI but I don't know much about it.
> My thinking is that we can use OAI to move this data instead of text files.  I'm sure it has the structure built in...doesn't it?  Is there a easy tutorial on OAI?  I’m not finding much for the layperson. And our new vendor is pretty new to library land (they are in museum land) and we doubt if they know OAI and I don't see easy ways to teach them.  Do you have suggestions?
>
> Jill Ellern
>