.. _history:

MOAI History
============

The MOAI software started its life as part of the repository software for the `Erasmus University Rotterdam`_ RePub repository.

The software was built on top of `pyoai`_, an OAI Server and Client library that was created for Erasmus University in 2003. The software was initially used for the `RePub publication site`_.

Many of the features that MOAI supports are the direct result of the experience and excellent feedback from the Erasmus University library team.

About a year later, the `Technical University Delft`_ funded a project to refactor and repackage the OAI server code from the Erasmus repository into a standalone software package: MOAI.

During this proces, some more abstractions were added, specificly the ContentProviders story, which allows MOAI to aggregate content from different sources, including the `Fedora Commons`_ object repository. This was a key feature for the Technical University Delft. 

.. _Erasmus University Rotterdam: http://www.eur.nl
.. _pyoai: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyoai
.. _RePub publication site: http://repub.eur.nl
.. _Technical University Delft: http://tudelft.nl
.. _Fedora Commons: http://www.fedora.info