Advancements in scientific data searching, sharing and retrieval

The Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Handling (OAI-PMHiii) is a standard that is seeing increased use as a means for exchanging structured metadata. OAI-PMH implementations must support Dublin Core as a metadata standard, with other metadata formats as optional. We have developed tools which enable Mercury to consume metadata from OAI-PMH services in any of the metadata formats we support (Dublin Core, Darwin Core, FCDC CSDGM, GCMD DIF, EML, and ISO 19115/19137). We are also making ORNL DAAC metadata available through OAI-PMH for other metadata tools to utilize. This paper describes Mercury capabilities with multiple metadata formats, in general, and, more specifically, the results of our OAI-PMH implementations and the lessons learned.