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Integrating digital libraries and VLEs in higher & further education

Open URLs

This is becoming a key technology to provide persistent links, and a number of projects are providing useful demonstrators. Generating learning object OpenURLs is shown to be feasible by at least one project but we are unsure yet of the generic solution - a 'LOM-OpenURL' community is however developing.

It is interesting to note that one project has questioned the timeliness of further investigations into the use of OpenURL to resolve learning objects, suggesting that there is as yet no clear evidence that large Learning Object Repositories will become as commonplace as is usually claimed.

Additional Resources

• An OpenUrl overview at the SFX site.
• A good explanation of the purpose of OpenURL can be found on the NISO website. NISO are developing a standard for OpenURL, and released their Open URL, version 1.0, as a Draft Standard for Trial Use on May 1, 2003.
• Andy Powell's article, OpenResolver: a Simple OpenURL Resolver has a good 'walk through' example.
• An example of a hosted OpenURL link-server for libraries can be found at http://www.openly.com/1cate/ The use of this service was explored by the EnCoRe project
• The Olive project also explored the use of OpenURL in the context of enabling reference lists within a VLE, and OpenURL enabling the VLE at learning object level. The project used SFX link resolver software. A briefing paper, describing the Olive project can be found at http://www.wmin.ac.uk/olive/overview.htm
• The formal spec: http://www.sfxit.com/openurl/openurl.html
• A bibliography on OpenURL issues: http://www.sfxit.com/openurl/openurl.html
• A UKOLN OpenUrl demonstrator: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/openurl/