I can't imagine that SFX has some fundamental assumption that an http URL in rft_id is never ever something that can be used for access, and even if it did, it would be letting the tail wag the dog to suggest that other resolvers should not do so; some do.

There are also resolvers that pre-check urls, at least there were before exlibris acquired linkfinderplus. So it's possible for a resolver agent to discover whether a url leads somewhere or not.


On Sep 14, 2009, at 2:23 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

I disagree. Putting URIs that unamiguously identify the referent, and in some cases provide additional 'hooks' by virtue of additional identifiers (local bibID, OCLCnum, LCCN, etc) is a VERY useful thing to do to me. Whether or not they resolve to an end-user appropriate web page or not.

If you want to use rft_id to instead be an end-user appropriate access URL (which may or may not be a suitable unambiguous persistent identifier), I guess it depends on how many of the actually existing in-the-wild link resolvers will, in what contexts, treat an http URI as an end-user appropriate access URL. If a lot of the in-the-wild link resolvers will, that may be a practically useful thing to do. Thus me asking if the one you had knowledge of did or didn't.

I'm 99% sure that SFX will not, in any context, treat an rft_id as an appropriate end-user access URL.

Certainly providing an appropriate end-user access URL _is_ a useful thing to do. So is providing an unambiguous persistent identifier. Both are quite useful things to do, they're just different things, shame that OpenURL kinda implies that you can use the same data element for both. OpenURL's not alone there though, DC does the same thing.

Jonathan


Eric Hellman
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