Yep, that's a pretty good summary of my personal advice Joe, thanks. 
Obviously others like Eric may have other opinions, that's just mine.

Joe Hourcle wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Sep 2009, Mike Taylor wrote:
>
>   
>> 2009/9/14 Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]>:
>>     
>>> Seriously, don't use OpenURL unless you really can't find anything else that
>>> will do, or you actually want your OpenURLs to be used by the existing 'in
>>> the wild' OpenURL resolvers. In the latter case, don't count on them doing
>>> anything in particular or consistent with 'novel' OpenURLs, like ones that
>>> put an end-user access URL in rft_id... don't expect actually existing in
>>> the wild OpenURLs to do anything in particular with that.
>>>       
>> Jonathan, I am getting seriously mixed messages from you on this
>> thread.  In one message, you'll strongly insist that some facility in
>> OpenURL is or isn't useful; in the next, you'll be saying that the
>> whole standard is dead.  The last time I was paying serious attention
>> to OpenURL, that certainly wasn't true -- has something happened in
>> the last few months to make it so?
>>     
>
> My interpretation of the part of Jonathan's response that you quoted was 
> basically, don't use OpenURL when you're just looking for persistant URLs.
>
> The whole point of OpenURL was that the local resolver could determine 
> what the best way to get you the resource was (eg, digital library vs. ILL 
> vs. giving you a specific room & shelf).
>
> If you're using OpenURLs for the reason of having it work with the 
> established network of resolvers, don't get cute w/ encoding the 
> information, as you can't rely on it to work.
>
> ...
>
> >From what I've seen of the thread (and I admit, I didn't read every 
> message), what's needed here is PURL, not OpenURL.
>
> -Joe
>
>