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OCLC Research : Software : OAICatMuseum

OAICatMuseumBETA

OAICatMuseum is software which allows museums to disclose descriptions of collection items as well as pointers to digital surrogates. It can be used to efficiently share digital images with trusted partners who have requested access to museum content, or with the networked world at large.

OAICatMuseum instantiates the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), a lightweight standard for information sharing. OAI-PMH facilitates a machine-to-machine conversation between a data provider (a server offering the data – the museum) and a data harvester (a server receiving the data – the trusted partner).

While OAI-PMH has been used in the library community since its initial release in 2001, museum use of OAI-PMH was pioneered by The Getty Trust and ARTstor, who have used the technology to transfer digital images from the Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute to the ARTstor Digital Library in 2006.

The software used for this prototype was a modified version of the OCLC Research open source software OAICat. OAICatMuseum is a version of OAICat which was inspired by the Getty modifications to the original software, and has been uniquely tailored to the needs of museums.

License

This software may be used without charge in accord with the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Distribution

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