University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

> Hate my tribe. Hate them for even asking why nobody uses library
> standards in the larger world, when "brain-dead inflexibility in
> practice" is one obvious and compelling reason, and
> "incomprehensibility" is another.  
>   
> \... \$DEITY have mercy, OpenURL is a stupid spec. Great idea, and
> useful in spite of itself. But astoundingly stupid. Ranganathan
> preserve us from librarians writing specs! - [Caveat
> Lector](http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2006/10/13/i-hate-library-standards/)

  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-NYVJHFvxo6lCTUP_pCYfftXVJax3-Mrzm_vodUkbXmsSwnOkogL46Tnmrg4O7fePDX_TpNpfEIxCSJWRuYYdnlpOrN5KpJXXvav_W4c61wkOMNF384ozw2j0FEW9aA0WP9s5/s320/blueBox.gif){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070336099380681730
style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-NYVJHFvxo6lCTUP_pCYfftXVJax3-Mrzm_vodUkbXmsSwnOkogL46Tnmrg4O7fePDX_TpNpfEIxCSJWRuYYdnlpOrN5KpJXXvav_W4c61wkOMNF384ozw2j0FEW9aA0WP9s5/s1600-h/blueBox.gif){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}  
OK, we\'re on a roll. After adding [*Journal of
Arachnology*](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/05/openurl-and-spiders.html)
and
[*Pysche*](http://bioguid.blogspot.com/2007/05/openurl-resolver-for-psyche.html)
to my OpenURL resolver, I\'ve no added the American Museum of Natural
History\'s *Bulletins* and *Novitates*.  
  
In an act of great generosity, the AMNH has placed its publications on a
freely accessible [DSpace
server](http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/). This is a wonderful
resource provided by one of the world\'s premier natural history museums
(and one others should follow), and is especially valuable given that
volumes of the *Bulletins* and *Novitates* post 1999 are also hosted by
BioOne (and hence have DOIs), but these versions of the publications are
not free.  
  
As blogged earlier on
[SemAnt](http://semant.blogspot.com/2007/02/harvesting-handles.html),
getting metadata from DSpace in a actually usable form is a real pain. I
ended up writing a script to pull everything off via the OAI interface,
extract metadata from the resulting XML, do a DOI look-up for post 1999
material, then dump this into the MySQL server so my OpenURL service can
find it.  
  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpvO32MXTNZV11oKJNzgx5xoKUQEXt8nnNGdlZ6ij-93NSwHBmvoY61FW5GAE6oeVIvCrhmEM59g8TCCgyZyoAb_5F5BcA9rYUAd339dRhEa5GV3PiXtPjzVbh7ttJMjGEA0M7/s320/logo_lg.gif){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070336245409569810
style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpvO32MXTNZV11oKJNzgx5xoKUQEXt8nnNGdlZ6ij-93NSwHBmvoY61FW5GAE6oeVIvCrhmEM59g8TCCgyZyoAb_5F5BcA9rYUAd339dRhEa5GV3PiXtPjzVbh7ttJMjGEA0M7/s1600-h/logo_lg.gif){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}  
Apart from the tedium of having to find the OAI interface (why oh why do
people make this harder than it needs to be?), the metadata served up by
the AMNH is, um, a little ropey. They use [Dublin
Core](http://dublincore.org/), which is great, but the AMNH makes a hash
of using it. Dublin Core provides quite a rich set of terms for
describing a reference, and [guidelines on how to use
it](http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-citation-guidelines/). The AMNH
uses the same tag for different things. Take **date**, for example:  

    2005-10-05T22:02:08Z
    2005-10-05T22:02:08Z
    1946

  
Now, one of these dates is the date of publication, the others are dates
the metadata was uploaded (or so I suspect). So, **why not use the
appropriate terms?** Like, for instance, . Why do I have to parse three
fields, and intuit that the third one is the date of publication.
Likewise, why have up to three

fields, and why include an abbreviated citation in the title? And why
for the love of God, format that citation differently for different
articles!? Why have multiple fields, one of which is the abstract (and
for which is available?). It\'s just a mess, and it\'s very annoying (as
you can probably tell). I can see some [hate library
standards](http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2006/10/13/i-hate-library-standards/).  
  
Anyway, after much use of Perl regular expressions, and some last minute
finessing with Excel, I think we now have the AMNH journals available
through OpenURL.  
  
For a demo, go to David Shorthouse\'s list of references for spiders,
say the [letter
P](http://canadianarachnology.dyndns.org/data/canada_spiders/AllReferences.asp?Letter=P)
and click on the bioGUID symbol by a paper by Norm Platnick in the
*American Museum novitates*.


OK, we're on a roll. After adding

 Journal of Arachnology

and

 Pysche

to my OpenURL resolver, I've no added the American Museum of Natural History's

 Bulletins

and

 Novitates

. In an act of great generosity, the AMNH has placed its publications on a freely accessible DSpace server.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

AMNH, DSpace, and OpenURL