Changes

Umlaut is an open source project originally developed by [[Ross Singer ]] while at Georgia Tech, and subsequently worked on quite a bit by Jonathan Rochkind of Johns Hopkins University. Umlaut is sometimes called a “link-resolver front end” or a “middle-tier link resolver”. In fact, the Umlaut is a link resolver, in the sense that it receives [[OpenURL ]] requests–usually representing a citation for a scholarly work–and responds with information on services available related to that citation–most significantly, with electronic availability. However, unlike most typical link resolver products (such as [[SFX]]), the Umlaut does not manage it’s own “knowledge base” of information on what titles an institution possesses from what vendors, and how to link to them. Umlaut relies on SFX–accessed through the [[SFX API–for API]]–for that information and service.

To discover if an open access version of an item is available, Umlaut does an author/title keyword search of IndexData’s indexes of [[OAISter ]] and [[Open Content Alliance ]] freely available text.. This is imperfect because all we can do is an author title keyword search. But when it works, it’s cool.

* [[xISBN]]/[[thingISBN ]] use. (Some thought is required in how to integrate this while avoiding false positives). Bowker ISSN service for metadata enhancement. OCLC xISSN? Integrate preceding/succeeding title information from OPAC or xISSN?