On 7/10/2010, at 2:22 AM, Dorothea Salo wrote:
>> However, it doesn't always seem to be the case that the "persistent URLs" that were coined by one repository are kept live by the next repository (or an adjunct piece of software). The effect is that all the legacy links break when the old service is switched off.
>
>> Does anyone have any experience of this? What do platform developers need to do to make the smooth transition of legacy URLs "really simple" as opposed to "technically possible"?
>
> - The initial repository doesn't mint indirect URLs for aspects of the
> system that turn out to need them. DSpace and bitstreams leaps to
> mind; most DSpace devs will tell you that this is Working As Designed,
> but I as a working repository manager will tell you that it is Broken
> because like it or not, many people do prefer to link directly to
> bitstreams.
This is interesting, and I have a further question:
This presumably works in the same way as DOIs do. There is a DOI for the item, but not for the file(s). The two systems therefore tend to work to the same level of granularity. Are users any more or less happy with one than the other, or do DOIs not have the same problems as readers see more of a disconnect as they still think of journals as paper-based and the DOI is just a way of getting to an electronic *copy*?
> - There's no easy way to mass-repoint indirect URLs. Frankly, the
> handle system is black magic to me. I don't know how to do this. I
> certainly should (as I have a migration in the offing myself). Better
> documentation and perhaps a lightweight tool or two (that works off
> something simple like a CSV file) for the major indirection systems
> would assuredly help.
You'll be pleased to know that this should be very easy. All you have to do is write a single java class that transforms a handle into a URL, then the handle server code and system will do the rest. It should be very trivial to write a little bit of code to do this based on the contents of a CSV. If you want to see how DSpace does it, look at:
http://scm.dspace.org/trac/dspace/browser/dspace/trunk/dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/handle/HandlePlugin.java
You'll see that the majority of required methods can be left unimplemented, and you just have to fill in a few of them to return the URL for a particular handle.
Cheers,
Stuart Lewis
IT Innovations Analyst and Developer
Te Tumu Herenga The University of Auckland Library
Auckland Mail Centre, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Ph: +64 (0)9 373 7599 x81928
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