OAI-PMH: Basics and Resources

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a set of specifications for making structured open repository metadata accessible to other service providers issuing requests.

Why learn about OAI-PMH?

Taking advantage of repositories (data providers) and services (service providers) that offer metadata using OAI-PMH will allow your resources better visibility and access.  For example, many discovery services (the “harvester”) use OAI-PMH metadata for indexing open access institutional repository articles.

The Basics

Open Archives InitiativeOpen Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) specifies how metadata is structured and presented for ingestion by external services, usually on the Internet.  OAI-PMH metadata is encoded in extensible markup language (XML) format.  OAI-PMH records are harvested using HTTP requests.

OAI-PMH is a project of the Open Archives Initiative.

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