I do like Ross's solution, if you really wanna use OpenURL. I'm much
more comfortable with the idea of including a URI based on your own
local service in rft_id, then including any old public URL in rft_id.
Then at least your link resolver can say "if what's in rft_id begins
with (eg) http://telstar.open.ac.uk/, THEN I know this is one of these
purl type things, and I know that sending the user to it will result in
a redirect to an end-user-appropriate access URL."
Cause that's my concern with putting random URLs in rft_id, that there's
no way to know if they are intended as end-user-appropriate access URLs
or not, and in putting things in rft_id that aren't really good
"identifiers" for the referent at all. But using your own local
service ID, now you really DO have something that's appropriately
considered a "persistent identifier" for the referent, AND you have a
straightforward way to tell when the rft_id of this context is intended
as an access URL.
Jonathan
Ross Singer wrote:
> Oh yeah, one thing I left off --
>
> In Moodle, it would probably make sense to link to the URL in the <a> tag:
> <a href="http://bbc.co.uk/">The Beeb!</a>
> but use a javascript onMouseDown action to rewrite the link to route
> through your funky link resolver path, a la Google.
>
> That way, the page works like any normal webpage, "right mouse
> click->Copy Link Location" gives the user the "real" URL to copy and
> paste, but normal behavior funnels through the link resolver.
>
> -Ross.
>
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Given that the burden of creating these links is entirely on RefWorks
>> & Telstar, OpenURL seems as good a choice as anything (since anything
>> would require some other service, anyway). As long as the profs
>> aren't expected to mess with it, I'm not sure that *how* you do the
>> indirection matters all that much and, as you say, there are added
>> bonuses to keeping it within SFX.
>>
>> It seems to me, though, that your rft_id should be a URI to the db
>> you're using to store their references, so your CTX would look
>> something like:
>>
>> http://res.open.ac.uk/?rfr_id=info:/telstar.open.ac.uk&rft_id=http://telstar.open.ac.uk/1234&dc.identifier=http://bbc.uk.co/
>> # not url encoded because I have, you know, a life.
>>
>> I can't remember if you can include both metadata-by-reference keys
>> and metadata-by-value, but you could have by-reference
>> (&rft_ref=http://telstar.open.ac.uk/1234&rft_ref_fmt=RIS or something)
>> point at your citation db to return a formatted citation.
>>
>> This way your citations are unique -- somebody pointing at today's
>> London Times frontpage isn't the same as somebody else's on a
>> different day.
>>
>> While I'm shocked that I agree with using OpenURL for this, it seems
>> as reasonable as any other solution. That being said, unless you can
>> definitely offer some other service besides linking to the resource,
>> I'd avoid the resolver menu completely.
>>
>> -Ross.
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:17 AM, O.Stephens <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Ross - no you didn't miss it,
>>>
>>> There are 3 ways that references might be added to the learning environment:
>>>
>>> An author (or realistically a proxy on behalf of the author) can insert a reference into a structured Word document from an RIS file. This structured document (XML) then goes through a 'publication' process which pushes the content to the learning environment (Moodle), including rendering the references from RIS format into a specified style, with links.
>>> An author/librarian/other can import references to a 'resources' area in our learning environment (Moodle) from a RIS file
>>> An author/librarian/other can subscribe to an RSS feed from a RefWorks 'RefShare' folder within the 'resources' area of the learning environment
>>>
>>> In general the project is focussing on the use of RefWorks - so although the RIS files could be created by any suitable s/w, we are looking specifically at RefWorks.
>>>
>>> How you get the reference into RefWorks is something we are looking at currently. The best approach varies depending on the type of material you are looking at:
>>>
>>> For websites it looks like the 'RefGrab-it' bookmarklet/browser plugin (depending on your browser) is the easiest way of capturing website details.
>>> For books, probably a Union catalogue search from within RefWorks
>>> For journal articles, probably a Federated search engine (SS 360 is what we've got)
>>> Any of these could be entered by hand of course, as could several other kinds of reference
>>>
>>> Entering the references into RefWorks could be done by an author, but it more likely to be done by a member of clerical staff or a librarian/library assistant
>>>
>>> Owen
>>>
>>> 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 Ross Singer
>>>> Sent: 15 September 2009 15:56
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Implementing OpenURL for simple web resources
>>>>
>>>> Owen, I might have missed it in this message -- my eyes are
>>>> starting glaze over at this point in the thread, but can you
>>>> describe how the input of these resources would work?
>>>>
>>>> What I'm basically asking is -- what would the professor need
>>>> to do to add a new: citation for a 70 year old book; journal
>>>> on PubMed; URL to CiteSeer?
>>>>
>>>> How does their input make it into your database?
>>>>
>>>> -Ross.
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:04 AM, O.Stephens
>>>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> True. How, from the OpenURL, are you going to know that the rft is
>>>>>> meant to represent a website?
>>>>>>
>>>>> I guess that was part of my question. But no one has suggested
>>>>> defining a new metadata profile for websites (which I
>>>>>
>>>> probably would
>>>>
>>>>> avoid tbh). DC doesn't seem to offer a nice way of doing
>>>>>
>>>> this (that is
>>>>
>>>>> saying 'this is a website'), although there are perhaps
>>>>>
>>>> some bits and
>>>>
>>>>> pieces (format, type) that could be used to give some
>>>>>
>>>> indication (but
>>>>
>>>>> I suspect not unambiguously)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> But I still think what you want is simply a purl server. What makes
>>>>>> you think you want OpenURL in the first place? But I still don't
>>>>>> really understand what you're trying to do: "deliver consistency of
>>>>>> approach across all our references" -- so are you using OpenURL for
>>>>>> it's more "conventional" use too, but you want to tack on a
>>>>>>
>>>> purl-like
>>>>
>>>>>> functionality to the same software that's doing something
>>>>>>
>>>> more like a
>>>>
>>>>>> conventional link resolver? I don't completely understand
>>>>>>
>>>> your use case.
>>>>
>>>>> I wouldn't use OpenURL just to get a persistent URL - I'd
>>>>>
>>>> almost certainly look at PURL for this. But, I want something
>>>> slightly different. I want our course authors to be able to
>>>> use whatever URL they know for a resource, but still try to
>>>> ensure that the link works persistently over time. I don't
>>>> think it is reasonable for a user to have to know a 'special'
>>>> URL for a resource - and this approach means establishing a
>>>> PURL for all resources used in our teaching material whether
>>>> or not it moves in the future - which is an overhead it would
>>>> be nice to avoid.
>>>>
>>>>> You can hit delete now if you aren't interested, but ...
>>>>>
>>>>> ... perhaps if I just say a little more about the project
>>>>>
>>>> I'm working on it may clarify...
>>>>
>>>>> The project I'm working on is concerned with referencing
>>>>>
>>>> and citation. We are looking at how references appear in
>>>> teaching material (esp. online) and how they can be reused by
>>>> students in their personal environment (in essays, later
>>>> study, or something else). The references that appear can be
>>>> to anything - books, chapters, journals, articles, etc.
>>>> Increasingly of course there are references to web-based materials.
>>>>
>>>>> For print material, references generally describe the
>>>>>
>>>> resource and nothing more, but for digital material
>>>> references are expected not only to describe the resource,
>>>> but also state a route of access to the resource. This tends
>>>> to be a bad idea when (for example) referencing e-journals,
>>>> as we know the problems that surround this - many different
>>>> routes of access to the same item. OpenURLs work well in this
>>>> situation and seem to me like a sensible (and perhaps the
>>>> only viable) solution. So we can say that for
>>>> journals/articles it is sensible to ignore any URL supplied
>>>> as part of the reference, and to form an OpenURL instead. If
>>>> there is a DOI in the reference (which is increasingly
>>>> common) then that can be used to form a URL using DOI
>>>> resolution, but it makes more sense to me to hand this off to
>>>> another application rather than bake this into the reference
>>>> - and OpenURL resolvers are reasonably set to do this.
>>>>
>>>>> If we look at a website it is pretty difficult to reference
>>>>>
>>>> it without including the URL - it seems to be the only good
>>>> way of describing what you are actually talking about (how
>>>> many people think of websites by 'title', 'author' and
>>>> 'publisher'?). For me, this leads to an immediate confusion
>>>> between the description of the resource and the route of
>>>> access to it. So, to differentiate I'm starting to think of
>>>> the http URI in a reference like this as a URI, but not
>>>> necessarily a URL. We then need some mechanism to check,
>>>> given a URI, what is the URL.
>>>>
>>>>> Now I could do this with a script - just pass the URI to a
>>>>>
>>>> script that checks what URL to use against a list and
>>>> redirects the user if necessary. On this point Jonathan said
>>>> "if the usefulness of your technique does NOT count on being
>>>> inter-operable with existing link resolver infrastructure...
>>>> PERSONALLY I would be using OpenURL, I don't think it's worth
>>>> it" - but it struck me that if we were passing a URI to a
>>>> script, why not pass it in an OpenURL? I could see a number
>>>> of advantages to this in the local context:
>>>>
>>>>> Consistency - references to websites get treated the same as
>>>>> references to journal articles - this means a single
>>>>>
>>>> approach on the
>>>>
>>>>> course side, with flexibility Usage stats - we could collect these
>>>>> whatever, but if we do it via OpenURL we get this in the
>>>>>
>>>> same place as
>>>>
>>>>> the stats about usage of other scholarly material and could
>>>>>
>>>> consider
>>>>
>>>>> driving personalisation services off the data (like the bX product
>>>>> from Ex Libris) Appropriate copy problem - for resources we
>>>>>
>>>> subscribe
>>>>
>>>>> to with authentication mechanisms there is (I think) an
>>>>>
>>>> equivalent to
>>>>
>>>>> the 'appropriate copy' issue as with journal articles - we
>>>>>
>>>> can push a
>>>>
>>>>> URI to 'Web of Science' to the correct version of Web of
>>>>>
>>>> Science via a
>>>>
>>>>> local authentication method (using ezproxy for us)
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem with the approach (as Nate and Eric mention) is
>>>>>
>>>> that any approach that relies on the URI as a identifier
>>>> (whether using OpenURL or a script) is going to have problems
>>>> as the same URI could be used to identify different resources
>>>> over time. I think Eric's suggestion of using additional
>>>> information to help differentiate is worth looking at, but I
>>>> suspect that this is going to cause us problems - although
>>>> I'd say that it is likely to cause us much less work than the
>>>> alternative, which is allocating every single reference to a
>>>> web resource used in our course material it's own persistent URL.
>>>>
>>>>> The use case we are currently looking at is only with our
>>>>>
>>>> own (authenticated) learning environment - so these OpenURLs
>>>> are not going to appear in the wild, so to some extent
>>>> perhaps it doesn't matter what we do - but it still seems
>>>> sensible to me to look at what 'good practice' might look like.
>>>>
>>>>> I hope this is clear - I'm still struggling with some of
>>>>>
>>>> this, and sometimes it doesn't make complete sense to me, but
>>>> that's my best stab at explaining my thinking at the moment.
>>>> Again, I appreciate the comments. Jonathan said "But you seem
>>>> to understand what's up". I wish I did! I guess that I'm
>>>> reasonably confident that the approach I'm describing has
>>>> some chance of doing the job - whether it is the best
>>>> approach I'm not so sure about.
>>>>
>>>>> Owen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC
>>>>>
>>>> 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity
>>>> registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
>>>>
>>> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
>>>
>>>
>
>
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