TechEssence.info

Executive Summary

The Open Archives Initiative is an ad hoc organization that created a protocol for organizations to share metadata. The OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting is being used by hundreds of organizations worldwide to share metadata with others and "harvest" or gather metadata from others. It has emerged as one of the most useful protocols for providing interoperability among repositories of digital content. To get a sense of the breadth and depth of content available via this protocol, see OAIster.org.