In this paper we develop a natural generalization of Schauder basis theory, we term operator-valued basis or simply ov -basis theory, using operator-algebraic methods. We prove several results for ov -basis concerning duality, orthogonality, biorthogonality and minimality. We prove that the operators of a dual ov -basis are continuous. We also define the concepts of Bessel, Hilbert ov -basis and obtain some characterizations of them. We study orthonormal and Riesz ov -bases for Hilbert spaces. Finally we consider the stability of ov -bases under small perturbations. We generalize a result of Paley-Wiener [4] to the situation of ov -basis.