>>> [log in to unmask] 2004-10-21 10:38:47 >>>
> which is not what this proposal does. This proposal does not have an
> authority list, it has a separate URI value for each entry in what
was
> once an authority list.

    Quite.  info URIs don't appear to have any benefit *beyond* keeping
RDF folks happy (disclaimer: I'm not an RDF folk either).

> I have to be honest -- I'm not a great fan of RDF. I see it as all
form
> and little substance. In other words, RDF is syntax, and what I
really
> care about is semantics. (I call the "semantic web" the "syntactic
web."
> There are no semantics without humans.) The string
"urn:ISSN:0000-0000"
> does not lead a program to "understand" any more than "type="issn".

    Naturally, the program must be written by a programmer who knows
about URNs.  Likewise a machine is currently programmed by a
knowledgeable user to recognize
    <identifier type="issn">...
The alternative scheme
    <identifier>urn:ISSN:...
separates the syntax of the identifier (ISSN) from the syntax of the
metadata record (MODS).  So a MODS application can work with an
application that knows URNs, but not MODS, i.e. it doesn't know that
it's supposed to be looking for an attribute named "type" to help it
parse the identifier.

    Dublin core URIs were mentioned because the RDF is human-readable
as well as machine-readable.  Suppose someone uses a home-grown list of
relator terms:
    <roleTerm type="code">frobnoz</roleTerm>
This tells us nothing, but
    <roleTerm>http://example.org/relator#frobnoz</roleTerm>
This presents the possibility of retrieving the network resource to
find out what contribution a frobnoz makes, exactly.

> Because we are getting down to the value level, and because we do
want
> there to be semantics (URIs do not have semantics), we might want to
> consider a (machine-readable) data dictionary rather than URIs as
the
> underlying structure for our values. (And, no, I'm not channeling
Norman
> Paskin, thank you.)

    For genres, subjects, names, and uniform titles, MADS provides the
means to realize such a machine readable dictionary.  It could be
extended to relator terms, etc., or another format could be defined.
Again, this presumes URIs that actually refer to these dictionaries,
*not* info URIs.

--Andy