  We describe mod_oai, an Apache 2.0 module that implements the Open Archives
Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAIPMH is the de facto
standard for metadata exchange in digital libraries and allows repositories to
expose their contents in a structured, application-neutral format with
semantics optimized for accurate incremental harvesting. Current
implementations of OAI-PMH are either separate applications that access an
existing repository, or are built-in to repository software packages. mod_oai
is different in that it optimizes harvesting web content by building OAI-PMH
capability into the Apache server. We discuss the implications of adding
harvesting capability to an Apache server and describe our initial experimental
results accessing a departmental web site using both web crawling and OAIPMH
harvesting techniques.
