[OAI-general] mod_oai Project Aims at Optimizing Web Crawling

[Michael Nelson]

mod_oai Project Aims at Optimizing Web Crawling

For immediate release April 21, 2004

Norfolk VA & Los Alamos NM - The Computer Science Department of Old
Dominion University and the Research Library of the Los Alamos
National Laboratory announce the launch of the "mod_oai" project.
The aim of the project is to create the mod_oai Apache software
module that will expose content accessible from Apache Web servers
via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
(OAI-PMH).  The mod_oai project is generously funded by the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation.

Apache is an open-source Web server that is used by 63% - approximately
27 million - of the Websites in the world.  The OAI-PMH is a protocol
to selectively harvest from data repositories.  The protocol has
had a considerable impact in the field of digital libraries but it
has yet to be embraced by the general Web community.  The mod_oai
project hopes to achieve such broader acceptance by making the
power and efficiency of the OAI-PMH available to Web servers and
Web crawlers.  For example, the planned OAI-PMH interface to Apache
Web servers should allow responding to requests to collect all
files added or changed since a specified date, or all files that
are of a specified MIME-type.

The Apache Web server defines an extensible module format that
allows specific functionality to be incorporated directly into the
Web server.  The mod_oai project will build such an Apache module
that is able to respond to OAI-PMH requests pertaining to files
made accessible by the Apache server. The mod_oai module will be
developed under the GNU Public License (GPL) and distributed through
sourceforge.net upon completion.

Contact: Michael Nelson <mln@cs.odu.edu> and Herbert Van de Sompel
<herbertv@lanl.gov>.

More information about the mod_oai project can be found at
<http://www.modoai.org>.

More information about the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting can be found at <http://www.openarchives.org/>.

More information about Apache can be found at <http://www.apache.org/>.

More information about the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation can be found
at:  <http://www.mellon.org/>.


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Michael L. Nelson mln@cs.odu.edu http://www.cs.odu.edu/~mln/
Dept of Computer Science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA 23529
+1 757 683 6393 +1 757 683 4900 (f)