Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the activities of Bielefeld University Library in establishing OAI based repository servers and in using OAI resources for end‐user‐oriented search services like Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE). Design/methodology/approach Discusses OAI based repository servers. Findings BASE is able to integrate external functions of Google Scholar. The search engine technology can replace or amend the search functions of a given repository software. BASE can also be embedded in external repository environments. Originality/value The paper provides an overview of the functionalities of BASE and gives insight into the challenges that have to be faced when harvesting and integrating resources from multiple OAI servers.