COMPUTER SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
 
                        WEDNESDAY AUGUST 28
 
                     EDUCATION BUILDING ROOM 226
 
                   TIME: 10:00 (DONUTS) 10:10 (TALK)


                       "OpenURL: New Directions"

                       Dr. Herbert Van de Sompel 
                     Los Alamos National Laboratory


Abstract:

The OpenURL framework is an interoperability model that facilitates
context-sensitive reference linking in distributed digital libraries.  
When delivering metadata descriptions to users of a digital library,
information providers introd uce an OpenURL for each such description.  
The OpenURL is an HTTP request targeted at a linking server of the user's
preference.  When clicked by the user, the OpenURL transfers relevant
parts of the metadata description to the user's linking server.  This
transfer is either: By-value - the metadata is delivered in the HTTP
GET/POST, or By-reference - a pointer to the metadata is delivered in the
HTTP GET/POST.  Upon receipt, the linking server analyzes the metadata and
delivers appropriate linking services to the user.  Whereas the draft
OpenURL specification was focused on facilitating the on-demand transfer
of metadata of scholarly works, the emerging OpenURL NISO standard aims to
be applicable well beyond this realm.  To that end, an extensibility
mechanism is being built in that allows by-value as well as by-reference
transfer of metadata expressed according to multiple metadata formats.

Please see http://lib-www.lanl.gov/~herbertv/ for more information about
OpenURL.