This past semester I worked on a project investigating the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, OAI-PMH. For Digital Preservation (INFO 655) I researched how academic digital repositories make their content harvestable with this protocol. For Web Development (INFO 638) I made a database driven website that makes API requests to OAI-PMH participants, processes the data received, and stores it into a searchable database.

OAI-PMH allows digital repositories to make the metadata of various media types available to harvesters. There has been large buy-in to this protocol in the academic community since its establishment in 2001. This is part of a larger Open Access movement encouraging the sharing and reuse of research.

The site also allows users to submit a repository to be added to the database. I only used a handful of repositories, and I'm sure that many more exist. The user submissions allow for the site to grow in usefulness by continually aggregating library science resources.