At Wed, 5 Dec 2007 19:53:10 -0500,
Ray Denenberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >Like... who is the author of a search result?
>
> And who is the author of an ATOM feed? If the ATOM standard makes author
> mandatory, and expects that a meaningful author must always  be supplied,
> then I have less regard for the "good faith" principle than I've expressed
> earlier. For author I would have no regrets saying put in the string
> 'author'.

Whether or not atom responses are specified, I’d suggest that the wrong
path is being followed here.

Here is what I would imagine an atom entry in response to an search
would look like.

<atom:entry>
  <atom:id>http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8172707</atom:id>
  <atom:author>
    <atom:name>Tressell, Robert</atom:name>
    <atom:uri>http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/lccn-n80-33982</atom:uri>
  </atom:author>
  <atom:title>The ragged trousered philanthropists</atom:title>
  <atom:summary>Tressell’s 1914 novel about class struggle in Britain
  at the beginning of the 20th century.</atom:summary>
  <published>1914</published>
  <dc:publisher>London, G. Richards</dc:publisher>
  <dc:language>eng</dc:language>
</atom:entry>

If you can’t specify the semantics and data model such that SRU atom
entries look like (more or less) normal atom entries, I fail to see
the point of using atom at all. If you shove everything of interest
into atom:content, you miss the advantages of using atom at all.

best,
Erik Hetzner
;; Erik Hetzner, California Digital Library
;; gnupg key id: 1024D/01DB07E3