The OpenURL Standard

Nettie Lagace (@abugseye)NISO Associate Director for Programs

CEAL Workshop on Electronic Resources Standards and Best Practices

March 25, 2014

What’s NISO?

• Non-profit industry trade association accredited by ANSI with 150+ members

• Mission of developing and maintaining standards related to information, documentation, discovery and distribution of published materials and media

• Represent US interests to ISO TC46 (Information and Documentation) and also serve as Secretariat for ISO TC46/SC 9 (Identification and Description)

• Responsible for standards like ISSN, DOI, Dublin Core metadata, DAISY digital talking books, OpenURL, SIP, NCIP, MARC records and ISBN (indirectly)

• Volunteer driven organization: 400+ spread out across the world

Premise of “Standards”

• Consensus standards created by a community with various stakeholders

• Trust• Leading to broader acceptance

• Standards as plumbing• Standards facilitate trade, commerce and innovation• Standards reduce costs• Standards support better communication and

interoperability across systems

ANSI Standards

• Openness, lack of dominance, balance = everyone affected has a voice

• Notifications, consideration of views and objections

• Consensus votes and appeals• ANSI patent policy, commercial terms and

conditions• Publication and maintenance• Credible & have Integrity

Typical flow of OpenURLhttp://sfx.calstate.edu:9003/sanmarcos?sid=google&aulast=National Diabetes Data Group&atitle=Classification an diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and other categories of glucose intolerance&id=pmid:510803

Link Resolver(includes KB & other programs)

Source

Target

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/28/12/1039

Possible application of OpenURL

http://sfx.calstate.edu:9003/sanmarcos?id=doi:10.4161/auto.19496

Link Resolver(includes KB & other programs)

http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/auto.19496

2. metadata

1. DOI

Link resolver

OpenURL function

• Enables transfer of metadata– From an information resource– To a service component (link resolver) that can

determine and provide context-sensitive services for the metadata

Types of OpenURL Sources

• A&I databases• Online journals (references in articles)• OPACs• E-print archives• Your local data repositories

OpenURL Format

• Base_URL– Server address of service component

• Content– Elements of the metadata or pointer to metadata in a

public syntax– Information supporting delivery of services

• Example:• http://sfx.aaa.edu/menu?genre=article&issn=1234-5678

&volume=12&issue=3&spage=1&epage=8&date=1998&aulast=Smith&aufirst=Paul

Base_URL

• Information Providers need to know which BASE_URL to insert into OpenURLs … in order to provide correct/local service menu/ links …– User Profiles– IP address identification– CookiePusher mechanism– Digital Certificates …?

OpenURL 0.1 / 1.0

• 0.1http://linkresolver.com?&sid=ISI:WOS&id=doi:10.1234/345678abc&genre=article&issn=1234-5678 &volume=12&issue=3&spage=1&epage=8&date=1998&pid=%3Cauthor%3ESmith%2C%20Paul%20%3B%20Klein%2C%20Calvin%3C%2Fauthor%3E&%3Cyr%3E98%2F1%3C%2Fyr%3E

• 1.0http://linkresolver.com?ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&ctx_id=10_1&ctx_tim=2014-03-23T21:43:23EDT&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_id=http://sfx.scholarsportal.info/windsor&rfr_id=info:sid/ISI:WOS&rft.aufirst=Paul&rft.aulast=Smith&rft.date=1998&rft.epage=8&rft.genre=article&rft.issn=1234-5678&rft.issue=3&rft.spage=1&rft.volume=12&rft_id=info:doi/10.1234/345678abc&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&svc_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:sch_svc&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&url_ver=Z39.88-2004

OpenURL standardization

• Committee AX – worked 2001-2003• Utilized initial draft spec (Beit-Arie, Hochstenbach, Van

de Sompel) as input (adopted as OpenURL 0.1)[http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/sfxopenurl01syntax]

• Standardized as ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004 (R2010)• Maintenance Agency: OCLC• OpenURL Registry:

http://oclc.org/research/activities/registry.html• 2015: Due for review!

Thank you! Questions?nlagace@niso.org

@abugseye

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