Hi,

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 22:47, Walker, David <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I would suggest it's more because, once you step outside of the
> primary use case for OpenURL, you end-up bumping into *other* standards.

These issues were raised all the back when it was created, as well. I
guess it's easy to be clever in hindsight. :) Here's what I wrote
about it 5 years ago (http://shelter.nu/blog-159.html) ;

So let's talk about 'Not invented here' first, because surely, we're
all guilty of this one from time to time. For example, lately I dug
into the ANSI/NISO Z39.88 -2004 standard, better known as OpenURL. I
was looking at it critically, I have to admit, comparing it to what I
already knew about Web Services, SOA, http,
Google/Amazon/Flickr/Del.icio.us API's, and various Topic Maps and
semantic web technologies (I was the technical editor of Explorers
Guide to the Semantic Web)

I think I can sum up my experiences with OpenURL as such; why? Why
have the library world invented a new way of doing things that already
can be done quite well already? Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong
with the standard per se (except a pretty darn awful choice of
name!!), so I'm not here criticising the technical merits and the work
put into it. No, it's a simple 'why' that I have yet to get a decent
answer to, even after talking to the OpenURL bigwigs about it. I mean,
come on; convince me! I'm not unreasonable, no truly, really, I just
want to be convinced that we need this over anything else.


Regards,

Alex
-- 
 Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
--- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---