Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

At the Symposium, Bill Moen of Dublin Core (that's Dublin Ohio)
mentioned the "Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting[1]", which appears to date back to at least 2001. Has anyone
had any experience with this protocol, or even heard of it? Any thoughts
on its positioning within the world of various initiatives?

Excerpt:

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (referred
to as the OAI-PMH in the remainder of this document) provides an
application-independent interoperability framework based on  metadata
harvesting.  There are two classes of participants in the OAI-PMH
framework:

- Data Providers administer systems that support the OAI-PMH as a means
of exposing metadata; and 
- Service Providers use metadata harvested via the OAI-PMH as a basis
for building value-added services. 

Thanks,
Joe

[1] http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html
-- 
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Associate
Booz | Allen | Hamilton