Preservation and transition of NCSTRL using an OAI-based architecture

NCSTRL (Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library) is a federation of digital libraries providing computer science materials. The architecture of the original NCSTRL was based largely on the Dienst software. It was implemented and maintained by the digital library group at Cornell University until September 2001. At that time, we had an immediate goal of preserving the existing NCSTRL collection and a long-term goal of providing a framework where participating organizations could continue to disseminate technical publications. Moreover, we wanted the new NCSTRL to be based on OAI (Open Archives Initiative) principles that provide a framework to facilitate the discovery of content in distributed archives. In this paper, we describe our experience in moving towards an OAI-based NCSTRL.