ebyblog students and information

OpenURL for Dummies

I can’t say I’ve wrapped my mind around OpenURLs. I picked up some understanding at code4lib but haven’t had time to actually play around with things. There have been a couple recent posts by Jeff Young of OCLC that are worth a read though:

• OpenURL: The Ministry of Silly Names
• Blind as a bat
• OpenURL 1.0 for Reptilian Brains

There’s also an idiots guide:

• Idiot’s guide to Implementing OpenURL 1.0 for Journal Articles
• Idiot’s guide to Implementing OpenURL 1.0 for Books

Despite the fact that OpenURL (version 1.0) seems overly complicated with all those names spaces stuffed in it, I think OpenURL has a lot of promise. The process of using OpenURL is like sending a unique identifier to a remote application and asking the application what it can do with the thing identified.

These unique identifiers describe a number of things such as but not limited to: 1) the identity of the thing in question (a book, a journal article, a video, etc.), 2) the identity of where the thing was found (another book, another journal article, another video, etc.), and 3) the identity of the individual making the request (me, you, or somebody else).

These unique identifiers are sent to a resolver. The resolver knows understands the syntax of OpenURL, parses it, and determines what services it can provide against the thing. In most cases these services point to locations of the full text of the item (a “link” resolver). Other common services include “find in a catalog” or “generate an ILL request”.

I think these services are just the tip of the iceberg. Why not send an OpenURL to a resolver and have the resolver return the email address of the thing’s author? Why not use OpenURL as a means to begin reviewing/annotating a document? Why not initiate OpenURL to create a Chicago-style bibliographic citation. There are many more services that can be applied to information objects than get, and OpenURL can be the conduit for these services.