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The OpenURL Registry
The Registry gives a name to every format, namespace, transport, encoding and profile the framework uses. OCLC ran it from 2006; since 2022 it has been a frozen, read-only copy.
Z39.88-2004 is extended through a Registry of named components rather than by amending the standard. Every entry has a Registry identifier in the info:ofi/ namespace, and those identifiers are what appear in OpenURLs: rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal, ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8, url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx.
Kinds of Registry entry
| Core component | Identifier pattern | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Namespaces | info:ofi/nam:… | info:ofi/nam:info:doi:, info:ofi/nam:urn:ISBN: |
| Character Encodings | info:ofi/enc:… | info:ofi/enc:UTF-8, info:ofi/enc:ISO-8859-1 |
| Serializations | info:ofi/fmt:kev, info:ofi/fmt:xml | KEV, XML |
| Constraint Languages | info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx, info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd | Z39.88 Matrix, W3C XML Schema |
| ContextObject Formats | …:ctx | info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx, info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:ctx |
| Metadata Formats | info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:…, info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:… | journal, book, dissertation, patent, … |
| Transports | info:ofi/tsp:… | info:ofi/tsp:http:openurl-inline |
| Community Profiles | info:ofi/pro:… | info:ofi/pro:sap1-2004 |
Registered KEV Metadata Formats
| Identifier | Describes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal | Journals, issues, articles, preprints | SAP1 |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book | Books, chapters, proceedings, reports | SAP1 |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation | Dissertations and theses | SAP1 |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:patent | Patents and applications | SAP1 |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:sch_svc | Scholarly ServiceTypes (full text, abstract, ILL…) | SAP1 |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dc | Unqualified Dublin Core | Dublin Core Community Profile |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:canonical_cit | Canonical citations | Registered 2010 |
info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:jpeg2000 | JPEG 2000 dissemination services | Registered 2008 (Los Alamos) |
…:map, …:score, …:sound, …:visual, …:computer | Maps, music scores, sound recordings, visual materials, computer resources | Marked DRAFT |
Registered XML Metadata Formats
info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd: + journal, book, dissertation, patent, sch_svc, oai_dc (OAI Dublin Core), MARC21 (MARCXML), mods (MODS 3.2), onix (ONIX for Books 2.1), iso20775 (ISO holdings), iso25577 (MarcXchange) and the Request Transfer Message schemas rtm_rft, rtm_req and rtm_svc.
Registered identifier namespaces
URI schemes http, https, ftp, ldap, mailto and data; URN namespaces urn:ISBN, urn:ISSN and urn:NBN; and info namespaces info:doi, info:hdl, info:pmid, info:bibcode, info:oai, info:sici, info:oclcnum, info:lccn and info:sid. Other info namespaces, such as info:arxiv, were registered in the separate "info" URI registry and are widely accepted by resolvers. See Identifiers.
Transports and encodings
Six transports: Inline, By-Value and By-Reference OpenURL, each over HTTP and HTTPS (see Transports). Registered character encodings include UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 and Big5 variants.
Hosting and status
NISO designated OCLC as the maintenance and registration agency in 2006, and OCLC Research ran the Registry at openurl.info. In 2022 OCLC stated that the Registry was no longer supported or maintained. A frozen, read-only copy is published by OCLC Research on GitHub Pages as "OpenURL-Frozen", and in 2022 requests to openurl.info were redirected to it. No new entries are being accepted.
Freezing the Registry does not invalidate any identifier: info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal means what it always meant. See Registry Deprecation.
The info: URI scheme
Registry identifiers use the info: URI scheme of RFC 4452. info:ofi/ is the namespace reserved for the OpenURL Framework ("ofi" = OpenURL Framework Initiative). The same scheme expresses identifiers of the things being described, such as info:doi/ and info:pmid/.