On Sep 7, 2007, at 10:01 AM, Stephens, Owen wrote:
> I feel that potentially link resolvers could be leveraged much more
> than
> currently and some of the things I'd like to see from an NGC ponit of
> view might be possible with tools that are already available to us. In
> the best "oh well, it's Friday" tradition, the following (slightly
> long
> and possibly rambling) post is an exploration of this idea - for those
> who can be bothered I'd be interested to know:
>
> Do others share my view of the potential here?
Yes, I share your point of view.
The phrase "link resolvers" is the older term for OpenURL. SFX is a
specific OpenURL implementation. I will turn the question around a
bit and ask, "Do you think OpenURL can be leveraged much more in our
integrated library systems and catalogs?" I will then answer my own
question and say, "Yes."
OpenURL is a protocol. It specifies a whole pile of name/value pairs
to be expressed through HTTP from a client to a server as a GET or
POST request. The name/value pairs are used to describe as many as 6
things:
1. referent - a cited thing
2. referring entity - a place where the referent was cited
3. requester - an entity (person) requesting services
4. service type - a specific service request
5. resolver - the computer answering requests
6. referrer - the computer requesting on behalf of the requester
Together, these six things make up what is called a ContextObject.
Most of the time link resolvers receive name/value pairs describing
Item #1, only. The resolver does some computing on the Item #1 (the
citation) and returns HTML for display on a browser that says, this
cited thing can be found here, there, the other place, or can be
borrowed via interlibrary loan. Such a use of link resolvers
(OpenURL) does not take full advantage of the specification. From the
standard (Z39.88-2004):
While this Standard does not restrict the use of
ContextObject to any particular environment or
application, it is was constructed to enable delivery
of *context-sensitive services* in a networked
environment such as the Web.
OpenURL can be exploited to a much greater degree. Suppose you had a
catalog. Each item in the catalog has a unique identification number.
Upon viewing an item from the catalog hotlinks could be created using
the identification number. The number could be sent to a resolver,
and the resolver can respond with *services* that can be applied to
the item: borrow, renew, review, annotate, download, correct, delete,
purchase, request, find similar items, tag, etc. Moreover, if the
user logged into the system prior to viewing an item, then other
services, more specialized services, could be applied. For example,
since you are not faculty document delivery would not be an option or
since you are not a librarian edit is not an option.
People expect to be able to do stuff with the things they find on the
Web -- services. OpenURL is bona fide standard for implementing such
a thing.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
(574) 631-8604
Received on Fri Sep 07 2007 - 08:53:46 EDT