Yes, that's correct. However, if you already offer persistent URLs for item data in one or more machine-readable formats (like MARC, or DC in XML), the additional work that needs to be done is likely just a fairly small amount of 'glue' to make those alternate formats discoverable via unAPI. As other machine-readable formats are made available in the future, they can be incorporated into the unAPI "glue" advertising them as well. unAPI makes no requirements about _which_ machine-readable formats are made available, it's just a way of advertising their association, basically. Jonathan Karen Coyle wrote: > Thanks, Chad, it does help. And I think it helps me understand why I > was a bit confused by the suggestion, but let me see if I've gotten it: > > I asked about COinS. COinS (drat, hate uplow, from now on just coins) > is basically just a formatted string imbedded in the html that will be > used by an external program. There is no service that the OL site > needs to provide other than popping the context object in there in the > right format. Very low effort, from the open library's point of view. > > unAPI appears to require some lightweight services that would have to > be added to the OL site: basically, responding to the three possible > unapi requests. So we can't *just* add an unAPI to the html pages -- > there's a bit more work that needs to be done. > > Is this correct? > > Thanks, > kc > > Chad Fennell wrote: >> On Dec 2, 2008, at 4:21 PM, Karen Coyle wrote: >> >>> I've looked at unAPI, but I can't get a handle on what needs to be >>> in the <abbr>. What would be useful? >>> >>> kc >>> >> >> >> I put together a pretty basic unAPI interface (technically, a Drupal >> module) for our EthicShare project; you can see how the <abbr> tags >> are used there. Ex: >> >> http://ethicshare.org/publications/ethics?sc=publications >> >> embedded on the page, you'll find things like: <abbr class='unapi-id' >> title='http://ethicshare.org/unapi/374360'> >> >> There are a few other pieces, but you can see these in action there >> as well. Ex, >> >> http://ethicshare.org/unapi/ -tells clients what formats are >> available on the sever - I've only implemented RIS so far... >> >> http://ethicshare.org/unapi/?id=374360 - tells the client what >> formats are available for a given resource. >> >> http://ethicshare.org/unapi/?id=374360&format=ris - kind of >> self-explanatory. >> >> >> Hope that helps a little... >> >> Cheers, >> -Chad >> >> > > -- Jonathan Rochkind Digital Services Software Engineer The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu