OAI-PMH

'Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting'.

Summary: A low barrier interoperability specification; Based around metadata harvesting model; Metadata about resources; HTTP based; GET / POST requests; XML responses; Uses unqualified Dublin Core; Stable (OAI has committed to making subsequent revisions of the protocol backwards compatible); Not a search protocol!

Weblinks

• Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Home)
• OAI forum, OAI for beginners, OAI and OAI-PMH for absolute beginners
• OAI tools
• OAI-PMH 2.0 Spec. - Specification for Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting 2.0
• OAI-PMH Static Repository 2.0 Spec. - Specification for an OAI Static Repository and an OAI Static Repository Gateway 2.0
• Demos and examples:
  • Demo of OAICat - The OAICat Open Source project is a Java Servlet web application providing an OAI-PMH v2.0 repository framework.
  • OAIster - Most often mentioned collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone.
  • PKP Open Archives Harvester - Free metadata indexing system developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research.