I agree with this Rosalyn. The issue that Nate brought up was that the content at http://www.bbc.co.uk could change over time, and old content might be moved to another URI - http://archive.bbc.co.uk or something. So if course A references http://www.bbc.co.uk on 24/08/09, if the content that was on http://www.bbc.co.uk on 24/08/09 moves to http://archive.bbc.co.uk we can use the mechanism I propose to trap the links to http://www.bbc.co.uk and redirect to http://archive.bbc.co.uk. However, if at a later date course B references http://www.bbc.co.uk we have no way of knowing whether they mean the stuff that is currently on http://www.bbc.co.uk or the stuff that used to be on http://www.bbc.co.uk and is now on http://archive.bbc.co.uk - and we have a redirect that is being applied across the board.

Thinking about it, references are required to include a date of access when citing websites, so this is probably the best piece of information to use to know where to resolve to (and we can put this in the DC metadata). Whether this will just get too confusing is a good question - I'll have at think about this.

Owen

PS using the date we could even consider resolving to the Internet Archive copy of a website if it was available I guess - this might be useful I guess...

Owen Stephens
TELSTAR Project Manager
Library and Learning Resources Centre
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA

T: +44 (0) 1908 858701
F: +44 (0) 1908 653571
E: [log in to unmask]


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Rosalyn Metz
> Sent: 14 September 2009 21:52
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Implementing OpenURL for simple web resources
>
> oops...just re-read original post s/professor/article
>
> also your link resolver should be creating a context object
> with each request.  this context object is what makes the
> openurl unique.  so if you want uniqueness for stats purposes
> i would image the link resolver is already doing that (and
> just another reason to use an rfr_id that you create).
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Rosalyn Metz
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Owen,
> >
> > rft_id isn't really meant to be a unique identifier
> (although it can
> > be in situations like a pmid or doi).  are you looking for it to be?
> > if so why?
> >
> > if professor A is pointing to http://www.bbc.co.uk and
> professor B is
> > pointing to http://www.bbc.co.uk why do they have to have unique
> > OpenURLs.
> >
> > Rosalyn
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Eric Hellman
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> Nate's point is what I was thinking about in this comment in my
> >> original
> >> reply:
> >> If you don't add DC metadata, which seems like a good idea, you'll
> >> definitely want to include something that will help you to persist
> >> your replacement record. For example, a label or
> description for the link.
> >>
> >> I should also point out a solution that could work for some people
> >> but not
> >> you- put rewrite rules in the gateways serving your network. A bit
> >> dangerous and kludgy, but we've seen kludgier things.
> >>
> >> On Sep 14, 2009, at 4:24 PM, O.Stephens wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Nate has a point here - what if we end up with a commonly
> used URI
> >>> pointing at a variety of different things over time, and
> so is used
> >>> to indicate different content each time. However the
> problem with a 'short URL'
> >>> solution (tr.im, purl etc), or indeed any locally assigned
> >>> identifier that acts as a key, is that as described in
> the blog post
> >>> you need prior knowledge of the short URL/identifier to
> use it. The
> >>> only 'identifier' our authors know for a website is it's
> URL - and
> >>> it seems contrary for us to ask them to use something else. I'll
> >>> need to think about Nate's point - is this common or an
> edge case? Is there any other approach we could take?
> >>>
> >>
> >> Eric Hellman
> >> President, Gluejar, Inc.
> >> 41 Watchung Plaza, #132
> >> Montclair, NJ 07042
> >> USA
> >>
> >> [log in to unmask]
> >> http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/
> >>
> >
>


The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).