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The authors, who jointly serve as the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) executive, reflect on the three‐year history of the OAI. Three years of technical work recently culminated in the release of a stable production version 2 of the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH). This technical product, the work that led up to it, and the process that made it possible have attracted some favor from the digital library and information community. The paper explores a number of factors in the history of the OAI that the authors believe have contributed to this positive response. The factors include focus on a defined problem statement, an operational model in which strong leadership is balanced with solicited participation, a healthy dose of community building and support, and sensible technical decisions.

For this fourth column in the IT I‐V (information technology interview) series participants actively engaged or interested in the metadata harvesting protocol of the open archives initiative were interviewed. The metadata harvesting initiative targets information generally inaccessible through standard browser searches, such as information stored in databases or within library online public access catalogs. We selected this topic as an information technology‐based initiative with the potential to provide information about the usefulness of metadata: in particular the Dublin Core metadata standard, but also about other metadata standards, as the protocol design supports community‐specific schemas as well. The group interviewed represents developers, commercial information providers, funders, and members of the scholarly publishing community. Along with learning about the interests and concerns of each of these stakeholders and about specific applications of the protocol, we identify potential questions that will ultimately need to be addressed.

This paper describes the use of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting in the NSF’s National Science Digital Library (NSDL). The protocol is used both as a method to ingest metadata into a central Metadata Repository and also as the means by which the repository exports metadata to service providers. The NSDL Search Service is used to illustrate this architecture. An early version of the Metadata Repository was an alpha test site for version 1 of the protocol and the production repository was a beta test site for version 2. This paper describes the implementation experience and early practical tests. Despite some teething troubles and the long‐term difficulties of semantic compatibility, the overall conclusion is optimism that the Open Archive Initiative will be a successful part of the NSDL.

This article aims to discuss some of the principal digital libraries projects during the 1990s and the impact that they had on modern libraries.

The paper combines information from contemporary papers about the projects with recollections by the author who was personally associated with many of the projects.

The paper reveals that, about 1990, computing reached a point where it became economically possible to mount large collections online and to access them over networks. The result was a flurry of experiments and prototypes. Many are almost forgotten, yet the libraries of today were formed by the energy and creativity of these efforts. The paper places some of the most influential projects in context and discusses why some prototypes and experiments succeeded while others fell by the wayside.

Several of the projects were never described formally in the academic literature, and there are no contemporary records to check some of the author's recollections.

The value of this paper is that many of the projects that formed the libraries of today were poorly documented and it is already difficult to find good information about some of them.

This paper aims to investigate the internet web page metadata usage behavior in terms of their metadata element co‐occurrences. Metadata are designed to facilitate both web publishers/authors to organize their web pages and search engines to index the web pages accurately.

This study examines the types of metadata elements employed by different professional groups of web authors, the number of elements they prefer to use, and the types of element combinations they typically embed in their pages' HTML code.

The findings reveal that the “keyword” and “description” elements were the most popular single elements. The most popular combination of two elements was that of “keyword and description”. Very few authors included combinations of five elements. This study also shows that preferences for element combinations varied by domains.

This approach will enhance the current understanding of metadata usage behavior and may help search engine designers as they continue their quest for improved indexing and retrieval of web pages.

The tradition of union catalogs and similar broad‐based, comprehensive bibliographic utilities and tools is one of long standing in the discipline of librarianship. As we move towards greater reliance on digital primary sources, the sharing of information about what we hold in our digital collections intuitively seems of increasing import and value as a way to organize and manage the explosion of online information resources. The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting enables effective and efficient sharing of digital metadata and is being utilized across a wide spectrum of disciplines and digital library projects. Experience to date gives reason for optimism and provides evidence and confirmation that, even as the technologies we use evolve, the intellectual framework of our tradition persists and continues to be relevant.

The purpose of this case study is to discuss and analyze the process of developing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital humanities projects across several institutions.

This case study will provide an overview of a multi-institutional digital humanities project from the planning phase to implementation. In particular, this case study will discuss identifying institutional partners, collaborating with a design, designing for curricular integration and best practices for sustaining a project of this size and scope.

Sustainable collaboration develops slowly over time. Communication and consensus-building are key components to completing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital project. Scalable design is a crucial step in planning for project expansion.

Though many journal articles articulate “best practices” for collaboration among geographically dispersed institutions, very few case studies discuss “best practices” within the context of project development, from initial idea to completion.