Print

Print


Jonathan Rochkind writes:
 > Crosswalk is exactly the wrong answer for this. Two very small
 > overlapping communities of most library developers can surely agree
 > on using the same identifiers, and then we make things easier for
 > US.  We don't need to solve the entire universe of problems. Solve
 > the simple problem in front of you in the simplest way that could
 > possibly work and still leave room for future expansion and
 > improvement. From that, we learn how to solve the big problems,
 > when we're ready. Overreach and try to solve the huge problem
 > including every possible use case, many of which don't apply to you
 > but SOMEDAY MIGHT... and you end up with the kind of
 > over-abstracted over-engineered
 > too-complicated-to-actually-catch-on solutions that... we in the
 > library community normally end up with.

I strongly, STRONGLY agree with this.  It's exactly what I was about
to write myself, in response to Peter's message, until I saw that
Jonathan had saved me the trouble :-)  Let's solve the problem that's
in front of us right now: bring SRU into harmony with OpenURL in this
respect, and the very act of doing so will lend extra legitimacy to
the agreed-on identifiers, which will then be more strongly positioned
as The Right Identifiers for other initiatives to use.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in
	 the original Klingon." -- Klingon Programming Mantra