Karen Coyle wrote:
> Can you elaborate on this Eric? It sounds interesting, but I don't know
> what you mean by having the OPAC be a resolver. Probably an example
> would help me.
Well, all a 'link resolver' is is something that takes an OpenURL, and
provides a web page to the user with information/services about the
citation in that OpenURL.
So the ILS/OPAC should be able to take an OpenURL, and provide
information to the user on the holdings that match that citation that
are controlled by the ILS. The ILS already has information in it about a
LOT of our holdings. An OpenURL can represent a book or a serial that
the ILS has information on. Shouldn't the ILS be able to respond to such
an OpenURL with useful information? That's what would make the ILS/OPAC
a 'link resolver'. Ideally, the ILS would provide work-flow for
controlling electronic serials too, so that wouldn't take place in an
entirely seperate product (While we're all for componentizing the
monolithic ILS, the current way that things are broken down into
componetns doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense to seperate
based on medium, electronic vs everything else!)
The problem, of course, is that the ILS is simply _not capable_ of this,
because the data in most of our ILS's is an unholy mess. The 'parsing an
OpenURL' is not the hard part.
Jonathan
>
> kc
>
> --
> -----------------------------------
> Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
> ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
> fx.: 510-848-3913
> mo.: 510-435-8234
> ------------------------------------
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Tue Sep 11 2007 - 09:18:50 EDT