RE: Press Release from DOI

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

This press release got it right: "make every hyperlink a sales
opportunity" with DOI.

The message Ann Okerson sent out about the DOI initiative from publishers
is an important one. As it succinctly states, a key intention of the DOI
is to promote sales. Because they have a lot of money for development, DOI
implementations from publishers are likely to be quite sophisticated. The
DOI foundation has posted a couple of canned examples of what might be
"offered" . It is something like what we really should be thinking about
in libraries and our navigation systems. So far the open url and sfx are
the only real games in town, and they are fairly primitive at the moment,
from what I have seen, in pointing to customized collateral or
supplemental information. We don't want to have to hand code for each
item, so the SFX server at the moment is about the only game in town. The
publisher implementation is more sophisticated. Each unique item has items
specifically connected to it that provide additional information/or buying
opportunities relevant to that item. The example to look at :

http://www.contentdirections.com/DOI-EB-Demo/mhindex.htm

which is theDOI-EB-Demo Index Page. Click on the "serve the customer
anywhere," to see a likely publisher created link set. click on the book
title and look at all the trees.  Library linking systems need to be at
least as sophisticated as this. When we can customize with management
tools to this level, we will be doing an immense service to our
constituents. So far, the tools we have are as far as I can tell,
relatively generic. book journal, maybe medical related. What we need to
be able to do is bring related unique informational resources to bear on
unique items found. For example, a book by Ernest Hemingway inour opacs
should have, without having to learn LC subject headings structure,
pointer links to appropriate biographical, bibliographical, and journal
literature resources in addition to traditional "subject" headings links).

Do we really have a product that will help us manage this level of access
to our information resources? I think the answer is not yet, though SFX
and the open URL are some of the tools we will need.

Chuck