A review of existing practice |
...an eLib supporting study |
See section 3.8 for an introduction to WHOIS++ and ROADS and for an example of the use of the ROADS SERVICE template.
The ROADS SERVICE template [ROADSSERV] provides a mechanism for describing online services. The template is defined as follows:
Title | Complete title of the resource. | |
URI | Identifier, usually an URL. | |
Admin | For administrator of site. | |
Owner | For the owner of the site. | |
Sponsoring | For the site sponsor/s. | |
Publisher | For the publisher. | |
Description | Free text description of the service. | |
Authentication | Authentication information, e.g. login and password details. | |
Registration | Registration information if the resource is not available for general access. | |
Charging-Policy | The charging mechanism in place. Including fee structure. | |
Access-Policy | Policies for accessing the service. | |
Access-Times | Time-ranges for mandatory or preferred access to the service. | |
Keywords | Appropriate subject keywords which apply to the resource. | |
Subject-Descriptor | A subject heading or classification number. | |
Subject-Descriptor-Scheme | The scheme used in the Subject-Descriptor field. | |
Short-Title | A shorter form of Title, e.g. an acronym. | |
Alternative-Title | An alternative form of Title. | |
Language | The language of the service. | |
ISSN | International Standard Serial Number. | |
Discussion | Free text discussion of possible discussion forums appropriate to the resource. | |
Source | Information about the definitive version of a resource. | |
Category | Type of resource | |
Comments | Comments added by the 'cataloguer' |
It is also worth noting that ROADS provides the ability to search across a number of local and remote ROADS services (using the WHOIS++ protocol). In order to configure cross-searching, ROADS uses the following attributes in a configuration file to describe each remote service:
URI | The URI for the service |
Host-Name | A host name... |
Host-Port | ...and port number |
Description | A short description of the service |
Authentication-type | Authentication requirements |
Authentication-data | Authentication information, e.g. a password |
Andy Powell, UKOLN