>>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at  9:09 AM, Bill Dueber <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 
> 2. Should III (and others), when acting as a user agent, be such a dick?

In Innovative's defense, the URL verifier is a very limited and configurable 'robot'. 

- It only verifies the HTTP header response codes for the URLs in the library's records. It does not crawl, fetch or spider from there.
- It can be configured by Innovative to run at different times. It can be configured to not run automatically at all.
- It can be configured to not crawl URLs that match certain patterns (e.g., handle.net, purl.org, purl.access.gpo.gov) that will always return a non-200 response or are otherwise pointless to verify (e.g., loc.gov/catdir/).

It's a tool that is configurable. It's the libraries' responsibility to use it wisely.

I do believe that Innovative should do more to educate their users on its appropriate use and should ship it disabled by default, but that doesn't release the libraries from their ultimate responsibility.

HTH,
David




_____________________________________________________________________
David Jones                                     mailto:[log in to unmask]
Library Systems Manager                  http://www.scu.edu/library/
University Library                               fax:   408-551-1805
Santa Clara University                            phone: 408-551-7167
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Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick