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The Open Archives Initiative
"develops and promotes interoperability standards that
aim to
facilitate the efficient
dissemination of content"
http://www.openarchives.org/
Originally an effort to enhance access to e-print
archives.
Now independent of the type of content offered
and the economic mechanisms surrounding that content, providing access
to a range of digital materials.
The principal tool for interoperability is the recently
announced OAi Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, with two classes of participants:
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Data Providers administer systems that support the
OAI protocol to expose metadata about the content in their systems;
-
Service Providers issue OAI protocol requests to the
systems of data providers and use the returned metadata to build value-added
services.
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