Hi, On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 22:47, Walker, David <dwal...@calstate.edu> wrote: > I would suggest it's more because, once you step outside of the > primary use case for OpenURL, you end-up bumping into *other* standards.
These issues were raised all the back when it was created, as well. I guess it's easy to be clever in hindsight. :) Here's what I wrote about it 5 years ago (http://shelter.nu/blog-159.html) ; So let's talk about 'Not invented here' first, because surely, we're all guilty of this one from time to time. For example, lately I dug into the ANSI/NISO Z39.88 -2004 standard, better known as OpenURL. I was looking at it critically, I have to admit, comparing it to what I already knew about Web Services, SOA, http, Google/Amazon/Flickr/Del.icio.us API's, and various Topic Maps and semantic web technologies (I was the technical editor of Explorers Guide to the Semantic Web) I think I can sum up my experiences with OpenURL as such; why? Why have the library world invented a new way of doing things that already can be done quite well already? Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the standard per se (except a pretty darn awful choice of name!!), so I'm not here criticising the technical merits and the work put into it. No, it's a simple 'why' that I have yet to get a decent answer to, even after talking to the OpenURL bigwigs about it. I mean, come on; convince me! I'm not unreasonable, no truly, really, I just want to be convinced that we need this over anything else. Regards, Alex -- Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps --- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ---------------------------------------------- ------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---