The open archives initiative

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) develops and promotes interoperabil ity solutions that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The roots of the OAI lie in the E-Print community. Over the last year its focus has been extended to include all content providers. This paper describes the recent history of the OAI - its origins in promoting E-Prints, the broadening of its focus, the details of its technical standard for metadata harvesting, the applications of this standard, and future plans.