Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Book handles again

Book handles again

Herbert left a comment on my note below about the Open WorldCat URL syntax, and there were a couple of comments along similar lines on Karen's FreeRangeLibrarian post. The gist was why not use the OpenURL syntax for these links.

Sure .. we see OpenURL as very important moving forward (as discussed before) and it has always been under active consideration by colleagues developing Open WorldCat. We plan to provide a simple OpenURL resolver inferface to Open WorldCat in due course. Actual release time has yet to be established.

In summary. The current syntax is simple, human-readable, and human-constructable. We will complement it with OpenURL-based access which will allow additional service possibilities.

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3 comments so far

Posted by Ross Singer on August 4, 2005

I have to agree that making OpenWorldCat OpenURL enabled (you know, in due time), yet human url parseable, is a much better course.

Bravo on this.

Posted by Richard Wallis on August 5, 2005

I concur with the the comments about OpenURL being an ideal standard to use for such a feature.

It is simple [especially good 'ol OpenURL 0.1] and yet powerful [especially with Version 1.0].

Having an OpenUrl interface 'as standard' on Prism (the Talis OPAC product) has made plugging it in to lots of stuff, we never thought of at the time, just SO much easier.

So I welcome your plans to provide a OpenUrl interface to WorldCat, as I suspect many others will.

Posted by herbert van de sompel on August 5, 2005

I think that, if this decision was about human constructability, OCLC should have left the "wcpa" bit out. For me, human constructable is:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2005.03.024

because, in my better days, I am able to remember the http://dx.doi.org bit. Longer becomes a problem.