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