On Sep 11, 2007, at 7:20 PM, kcoyle_at_kcoyle.net wrote:
>>>> Isn't that what Z39.50 does for us? (Or SRU/SRW).
>>>
>>> Well, it's perhaps what they are _supposed_ to do for us.
>>
>> Psst. SRU/SRW are not necessarily designed to return holdings.
>> Instead, they are protocols designed to interface with indexes. Send
>> a query. Return a list of hits. Using SRU/SRW to return holdings
>> would be a novel use of the protocol; using SRU/SRW for this purpose
>> would be akin to using something like OpenSearch for this purpose.
>
> Eric, isn't the "hit" usually a record? And doesn't the record in the
> library catalog represent at least one "holding"? And aren't there
> often
> holdings fields included in the returned hit?
Actually, I'm splitting semantic hairs here. SRW/U is not "suppose"
to return holdings information, but it can. SRW/U only defines what
the search requests and search results look like. SRW/U by themselves
do not articulate the content that gets returned, just how they get
sent and returned. It is more than possible to return holdings, but
it is not "suppose" to return holdings. SRW/U is a framework for
queries and results. It is not designed to be a library-specific
framework, and therefore it is not necessarily designed to return
library-specific information, such as holdings. I am getting hung up
on the word "suppose".
Put another way, holdings fields are able to be specified in an SRW/U
recordSchema attribute, but they do not have to be specified.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
Received on Wed Sep 12 2007 - 06:34:50 EDT