On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The trick here is that traditional library metadata practices make it _very
> hard_ to tell if a _specific volume/issue_ is held by a given library.  And
> those are the most common use cases for OpenURL.
>

Yep. That's true even for individual library's with link resolvers. OCLC is
not going to be able to solve that particular issue until the local
libraries do.


> If you just want to get to the title level (for a journal or a book), you
> can easily write your own thing that takes an OpenURL, and either just
> redirects straight to worldcat.org on isbn/lccn/oclcnum, or actually does
> a WorldCat API lookup to ensure the record exists first and/or looks up on
> author/title/etc too.
>

I was mainly thinking of sources that use COinS. If you have a rarely held
book, for instance, then OpenURLs resolved against random institutional
endpoints are going to mostly be unproductive. However, a "union" catalog
such as OCLC already has the information about libraries in the system that
own it. It seems like the more productive path if the goal of a user is
simply to locate a copy, where ever it is held.


> Umlaut already includes the 'naive' "just link to worldcat.org based on
> isbn, oclcnum, or lccn" approach, functionality that was written before the
> worldcat api exists. That is, Umlaut takes an incoming OpenURL, and provides
> the user with a link to a worldcat record based on isbn, oclcnum, or lccn.
>

Many institutions have chosen to do this. MPOW, however, represents a
counter-example and do not link out to OCLC.

Tom