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OAI
What is OAI
The Open Archives Initiative (OAI)
develops and promotes network standards
to help the dissemination of
information. The OAI began as an
effort to enhance access to E-print
archives to improve scholarly communication,
but has expanded its remit to
include the exchange of a wide range
of digital content. The current OAI
technical infrastructure is specified in
the Open Archives Initiative Protocol
for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH),
which defines a standard mechanism
for repositories to share information
about their holdings.
Scores of archives already implement
the OAI-PMH protocol, and several
aggregation services exist (e.g.
OAIster and MyOAI) which harvest
data from many repositories and make
it searchable.
In the future, the OAI protocol is likely
to be extended to allow archives to
exchange not just metadata, but also
the digital content itself (including
PDF files, movies etc).
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Who is behind the OAI?
The OAI executive includes Herbert
Van de Sompel from Los Alamos
National Laboratory and Carl Lagoze
at Cornell University. There is also a
steering committee responsible for
overall policy and objectives. OAI's
financial support comes from the
Digital Library Federation, the
Coalition for Networked Information,
and a grant from the National Science
Foundation.
Why does the OAI exist?
As E-print repositories proliferated
online in the late 1990s, it became
clear that there was a need to develop
standard ways for each archive to indicate
its holdings. This would allow a
federated system to be built, so that
users could find their way to the article
they wanted, whichever archive it
resided in.
The OAI was launched with a meeting
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that took
place in 1999. The subsequent wide
uptake of the OAI protocol led to the
realization that the framework had
applications beyond the E-print community,
and has led the OAI to adopt a
broader mission: opening up access to
a range of digital material.
www.openarchives.org
www.myoai.com
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu
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