David Ruddy
Director, E-Publishing Technologies
Cornell University Library
Eric Rebillard
Professor, Classics and History
Cornell University
This project briefing reports on a joint effort by faculty and librarians at Cornell University to explore the possibilities and challenges of using OpenURL to provide system independent linking between citations of Classical literature and an increasing array of available online resources and services in Classics. Such linking, which can be extended to other domains, will allow seamless movement from scholarly resources to original texts and translations, improving digital services in the humanities. This project has been supported by a recent planning grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the American Philological Society. To date, project work has focused on the creation of a canonical citation metadata format, a strategy to address implementation challenges, and a prototype of a Classical literature knowledge base and linking system. By design, the metadata format, implementation scheme, and knowledge base structure are independent of Classics and can be deployed in other domains that frequently cite texts independent of particular editions or translations. The project also demonstrates how knowledge bases may be chained together to provide enhanced services to users, a model which may have wider application within the OpenURL community.
Handout (PDF)