OAIster
Encyclopedia
OAIster was a project of the Digital Library Production Service of the University of Michigan University Library
University of Michigan Library
The University of Michigan University Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of the largest university library systems in the United States. The system, consisting of 19 separate libraries in 11 buildings, altogether holds over 9.55 million volumes, with the collection growing at the rate of...

. Its goal is to create a collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone. OAIster harvests from Open Archives Initiative
Open Archives Initiative
The Open Archives Initiative is an attempt to build a "low-barrier interoperability framework" for archives containing digital content . It allows people to harvest metadata...

 (OAI)-compliant digital libraries
Digital library
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...

, institutional repositories
Institutional repository
An Institutional repository is an online locus for collecting, preserving, and disseminating - in digital form - the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution....

, and online journal
Electronic journal
Electronic journals, also known as ejournals, e-journals, and electronic serials, are scholarly journals or intellectual magazines that can be accessed via electronic transmission. In practice, this means that they are usually published on the Web...

s using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
OAI-PMH is a protocol developed by the Open Archives Initiative. It is used to harvest the metadata descriptions of the records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives...

 (OAI-PMH) protocol.

In early 2009, OCLC
OCLC
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is "a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs"...

 formed a partnership with the University of Michigan in order to provide continued access to open-archive collections through OAIster.

Access

OAIster.worldcat.org is a freely-accessible OCLC site for searching the millions of OAIster records alone. The records will continue to be indexed in OCLC's WorldCat
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...

, and will be integrated in WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide. They also will continue to be included in WorldCat Local and WorldCat Local "quick start" search results, and will continue to be available on the OCLC FirstSearch service to Base Package subscribers, providing a complement to other FirstSearch databases.

External links



Michigan°N date=June 2009°W
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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