Ok, I tried to do this, but I can't make a login to the wiki (keeps
complaining that I am not using a valid user name).
So, uh... yeah.
-Ross.
Ryan King wrote:
On Jan 25, 2006, at 9:02 AM, Ross Singer wrote:
Ross,
Could you add the description below (or a short version of it, or a
link to something similar) to http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-
formats? (under the OpenURL section)
Also, while I'm at it, someone needs to move/merge this [http://
microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming#OpenURL] and this
[http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming#MARC_.2F_MODS_.
2F_Dublin_Core] into http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-formats.
Thanks,
ryan
One of the obstacles in explaining OpenURL is the discongruity
between "the spec" and "the implementation". While, yes, what you
see in practice is a url with the metadata encoded as arguments in
the query string, this is merely a representation of the
"ContextObject" intended to be sent to a link resolver to permit
services based on the contextobject.
Let's back up, shall we?
An OpenURL consists of two independent parts: the ContextObject (or
the bibliographic metadata surrounding a citation) and the location
of resolver to parse the metadata and present contextual services
based on said metadata. The (very real) problem is that the term
"OpenURL" is also used as a catch-all for all of the independent
parts and how they work. This is mainly because it's a catchier
term than "Z39.88", which is the NISO standard all this is based upon.
So, when Tantek pointed out that this is very non-human readable url
string, that is a *particular representation* of the OpenURL
ContextObject (which is referred to as "San Antonio Profile 1" --
more commonly SAP1 -- and is represented in Key Encoded Values --
KEVs). This "representation" is independent of the ContextObject
(from here on known as CO) itself and is only intended to permit the
CO to be transmitted via an HTTP GET request (more on this in a bit).
There is also SAP2, which is an XML representation of the CO (see:
http://alcme.oclc.org/openurl/servlet/OAIHandler?
verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=info:ofi/
fmt:xml:xsd:ctx and the "Implementation Guidelines" link from that
page for more information) and is a much more human readable
format. This still (obviously) falls outside the scope of
microformats, but makes the point that encoding has nothing to do
with the CO itself. They are just agreed upon means of conveying
the CO to enable machines act upon them consistently.
The ContextObject could be conveyed just as easily in XHTML using
attributes, as long as the terms follow the vocabulary defined in
the OpenURL framework. The important thing to focus on here is the
ContextObject -- the address of the link resolver /is/ institution-
specific and should be handled by a user's (or machine's) activating
agent.
However, the link resolver is still a very important component to
this whole process. Getting users "appropriate copy" is a very real
(and very difficult) problem that libraries are trying to solve.
Link resolvers are a pretty efficient means of overcoming this
hurdle, so it would make sense to mark up bibiographic citations in
a way that link resolvers can easily parse.
I hope this clears up a little bit of the confusion.
-Ross.
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