On 9/11/07, Karen Coyle <kcoyle_at_kcoyle.net> wrote:
> Isn't that what Z39.50 does for us? (Or SRU/SRW). I think of the link
> resolver as doing more than returning holdings - in fact, it should be
> able to offer a range of services. I suppose we could add that to the
> catalog, but a lot of the things we want services around aren't in the
> catalog -- that's kind of how link resolvers got started. And I think
> that many of them do query the catalog when that's appropriate.
I don't think it's unreasonable, however, to think that we should be
able to send an OpenURL to an ILS and it give back a response
(preferably machine-readable, IMO) as to whether or not that
particular 'thing' is in 'the catalog'.
The problem with falling back to Z39.50 and SRU is that 1) these
interfaces would need to be configured to work with holdings and 2)
the OpenURL (which is the more 'standard way' in our current landscape
to ask for a specific item) which we already have would need to be
expressed in RPN or CQL (which then have to parsed and translated into
something that makes sense to the ILS in question).
This would vastly improve the catalog's presence in the current
incarnation of link resolvers, if nothing else.
-Ross.
Received on Tue Sep 11 2007 - 10:41:00 EDT