History
OpenURL was created by Herbert Van de Sompel, a librarian at the University of Ghent, in the late 1990s. His link-server software, SFX, was purchased by the library automation company Ex Libris Group which popularized OpenURL in the information industry. In 2005, a revised version of OpenURL (version 1.0) became ANSI/NISO standard Z39.88-2004, with Van de Sompel's version designated as version 0.1. The new standard provided a framework for describing new formats, as well as defining XML versions of the various formats. In 2006 a research report found some problems affecting the efficiency of OpenURL linking and recommended the creation of a group to establish best practice solutions. The KBART ( Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) working group has been set up to progress the recommendations of the research report. OpenURL standards and reporting work continues with NISO's IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) project, which produced a reporting tool and research summary in 2013 noting the benefits of data analysis to improve link resolution. In June 2006, NISO designated the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) as the "maintenance and registration agency" (or "registry agent") of the OpenURL standard, for an initial term of five years. In 2011, OCLC researchers highlighted their work in a NISO journal article, noting that "the OpenURL standard is one of the most heavily used NISO standards". As registry agent, OCLC was responsible for reviewing proposed extensions to the standard and maintaining a listing of those it approved. Per the standard, registry entries could specify particular metadata fields and their representation. The registry had the canonical URLhttp://www.openurl.info/registry.
In 2022, OCLC updated its OpenURL Registry webpage to state that the registry is no longer supported or maintained, saying it had been an "experimental research project" and "research prototype application". The standard registry URL now redirects to an archived version of the site, described as "the Frozen (deprecated) version of the Registry for the OpenURL Framework".
Standards
* NISO OpenURL version 0.1 (2000-05-16) * NISO OpenURL version 1.0f (2003-03-18) * ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004 * ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004 2010ref name="NISO_2010"/>Use
The most common application of OpenURL is to assist in the resolution of a request for a web resource (such as an online article). An OpenURL includes information about the referenced resource itself, and context information — both the context in which the OpenURL occurs (for example, a page of search results from a library catalog) and the context of the request (for example, the particular user making the request). If a different context is expressed in the URL, a different copy ends up resolved to. Changes in context are predictable, and do not require the original creator of the hyperlink (for example, the journal publisher) to handcraft different URLs for different contexts. For example, changing either the base URL or a parameter in the query string can mean that the OpenURL resolves to a copy of a resource in a different library. So the same OpenURL, contained for instance in an electronic journal, can be adjusted by any library to provide access to their own copy of the resource, without completely overwriting the journal's hyperlink. The journal provider, in turn, is no longer required to provide a different version of the journal, with different hyperlinks, for each subscribing library (See also COinS).Format
An OpenURL consists of a base URL, which contains the address of the user's institutional link-server, followed by a query string, consisting of key-value pairs serializing a ''ContextObject''. The ContextObject is most often bibliographic data, but as of version 1.0 OpenURL can also include information about the requester, the resource containing thehttp://resolver.example.edu/cgi?genre=book&isbn=0836218310&title=The+Far+Side+Gallery+3 http://resolver.example.edu/cgi http://resolver.example.edu/cgi?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book&rft.isbn=0836218310&rft.btitle=The+Far+Side+Gallery+3 ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004 – specifying the ContextObject version
* rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book – specifying the metadata format for the referent (in this case, a book)
* Fields from this format describing the referent object:
** rft.isbn=0836218310 rft.btitle=The+Far+Side+Gallery+3 – the title of the book
Keys always consist of safe characters and are not encoded, but values are URL-encoded.
Applications and tools
Several companies market link server systems. Some proprietary options include OCLC (as part oSee also
* OpenSearch * Uniform Resource Name * UKSGReferences
Further reading
* * * {{cite magazine , title=Rethinking Library Linking: Breathing New Life Into OpenURL , author-first1=Cindi , author-last1=Trainor , author-first2=Jason , author-last2=Price , publisher=American Library Association , date=October 2010 , edition=1st illustrated , volume=46 , number=7 , magazine=Library Technology Reports (LTR) - Expert Guides to Library Systems and Services , series=ALA TechSource , issn=0024-2586 , isbn=978-0-83895813-1 , id={{ISBN, 0-83895813-3 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=flhDIrhMjIwC (38 pages)External links