A probably really dumb question:

A partner of ours wants to use a URL as a "dc:identifier" for their records.
No problem so far this is one of the recommended values. They want it to be
used as the link to read the record. Also no problem .

However as a metasearch engine we need to be able to identify that it is a
URL and a link within a set of records from a number of different Sources
(for the sake of being awkward - like real life - assume all are queried via
SRU and are returning records in simple DC). They don't want to go beyond
using simple DC, so qualification is not an option. Using a "urn:url" type
namespace identifier would work. If everybody used it, which they won't, we
would be home free. [What is the 'namespace' identifier for a URL when used
within the DC set in SRU anyway? ISSNs ("urn:issn:") and DOIs ("info:doi/")
are all listed, but URLs are not]

Are we limited to detecting "http://" and deducing that it is not an ISBN?
Of course some will start "www." and others will be just "anywhere.com/..."
So this is a bit of a nightmare.

I don't want to have to produce hard coded variants of our SRU Connector to
handle this sort of issue. I want to keep a single Connector which is
configured for different Sources - if it has to be. The less variation there
is the less configuration there is and the more likely things are to work.

So the (main) dumb question is: How do they put this link URL in a returned
record in simple DC in a way that it can be recognized by dumb computer
programs? Or are we stuck with configuration?


Peter

Dr Peter Noerr
Chief Technical Officer
Museglobal, Inc.

tel: +1 801 208 1880
fax: +1 801 208 1889
cell:+1 801 910 4912

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