Report on: "Open URL" -Presenters- Melodie Hamilton, Steve Bischof and Oliver Pesch Connecticut College, New London, CT by Olga Verbeek, Salve Regina University
March 11, 2003

The Open URL
Presented by:  Melodie Hamilton, Electronic Access/Serials Librarian, Connecticut College

Melodie Hamilton is the Electronic Access/Serials Librarian at Connecticut College and she detailed the use of SFX as means of providing access to electronic materials owned by their library. Melodie described that the concept of the Open URL and resolver product SFX was first developed by Herbert Van de Sompel while at Ghent University, Belgium. This product became SFX from ExLibris. Connecticut College bought SFX in response to user's expectations to e-journal access. It also did away with the need of maintaining static URL's. (Aside: Later in the program Oliver Pesch clearly described the difference between static URL's and dynamic URL's.) The product SFX combines student information and elements from the desired article into a single request. Thus SFX combines full-text and extended services with user authentification. Melodie than demonstrated how easily it was to set up and maintain the SFX product.

Publishers and aggregators must use OpenURLs rather than traditional static URLs in order for SFX to work. Connecticut College provided the publishers and aggregators the URL of the SFX resolver server. Melodie determines what services the library will offer that is what options a search in a database will provide. In addition to providing full-text, links are also set up for extended such as links to the OPAC, abstracts, ILL services, and search engines.

View Melodie Hamilton's MS Powerpoint presentation: The Open URL

OpenURL Structure and Function
Presented by:  Steve Bischof, Science Librarian, Wesleyan University

Steve is the Science Librarian at Wesleyan University and described the OpenURL Standard which right now is 0.1 but soon will be1.0. Steve provided an example of an openURL and then took the URL apart and showed us how the URL is put together and what information it contains. Not every OpenURL contains the same amount of information, but will contain the following: the base URL (domain of resolver), the origin of the URL (database where it was cited in) and the description of the object.

The description of the object consists of three zones of which at least one must be in the OpenURL: Global Identifier Zone, Object Metadata Zone, and the Local Identifier Zone. The Global Identifier Zone is used for object identifiers that are globally defined. If the information is very specific to one information system or such, then the information is put in the Local Identifier Zone. Steve listed the only Global Identifiers recognized in this standard. The Object Metadata Zone is where the description of the object is described using standard metadata. The Local Identifier Zone is used for transporting metadata in formats that are specific to the originating information system, and that can not be expressed in the standardized syntax for the Object Metadata Zone. The Local Identifier Zone is prefaced by pid (private identifier).

The most important point to remember is how the OpenURL works to provide full text to the user. First the "citation database" (the Source in Steve's diagrams) needs to support the OpenURL standard and you the librarian will need to provide the citation database provider with the name of the OpenURL resolver server. The Open URL server may be a local home made program, a product such as SFX or Webbridge from Innovative Interfaces, Inc. or supplied and hosted by some vendor such as EBSCO's Link Server. Then the citation database will provide an OpenURL link within the citation. This link will be to your OpenURL resolver server and the link itself will contain information about the citation in the OpenURL format

The OpenURL resolver server may use the information in the OpenURL link from the citation database. How the resolver server uses the information depends on how the resolver is set up. You, the librarian configures the resolver. Usually the user will see a pop-up window that displays various options which the librarian has determined such as full text links, ILL links, etc. As an example, Steve showed how the information in the OpenURL is used to drill into the library's electronic resources to link directly to the full-text of the article.

Steve continued by looking at the future of the OpenURL standard. He also described how the metadata in an OpenURL can be passed from the originating database to the resolver server. For example the metadata can be passed inline (the long string one sees in the URL box at the top of the browser). Other methods includes by reference, or as packed values.

View Steve Bischof's MS Powerpoint presentation: OpenURL Structure and Function

Item-level linking & OpenURL: the perspective of a database provider
Presented by:  Oliver Pesch, Chief Architect, EBSCO Publishing

Oliver's presentation focused on how item-level linking providing links from citation databases into a library's resources. He showed the results of a search in a citation database. Then he showed the same results with added item-level links and one can immediately see the advantage as a seemingly citation only database is turned into a database with direct links to full-text articles. He described how the Open URL is used to provide dynamic linking instead of static links as the Open URL resolver allows for a look up in a library's database and/or rule table before a link is dynamically built to a particular resource.

Oliver next demonstrated two products from EBSCO, The built in "Smart Links" of the EBSCOHost interface and "LinkSource" an OpenURL resolver that can be included not only in EBSCO's products but also in any other product that a library may own that supports the Open URL incentive.

Oliver spent some time explaining the The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services Standards Committee AX in which he has been actively participating. The composition of this committee is both academic as well as those in the industry. More can be learned from: http://www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html.

View Oliver Pesch's MS Powerpoint presentation:
Item-Level Linking & OpenURL: The Perspective of a Database Provider

Report by:
Olga Verbeek
Information Systems Librarian
Salve Regina University
Newport RI
verbeeko@salve.edu
Comments Welcome!