On 2/9/12 2:14 AM, Juha Hakala wrote:
>>> I was thinking about things like:
>>> - "cool" URIs - hash? or no?
>
> At least some technical experts think that the main weakness of the so
> called cool URIs is the need to maintain the domain name registration
> (and the organizations' inability to carry on with it for decades). See
>
> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/urn/current/msg01670.html
Juha, thanks for the info regarding IETF activity. The issue I see with
URNs is not the structure but the minting: should libraries begin to
link their data I see a need for thousands or even tens of thousands of
identifiers (hundreds of thousands?) when we figure out a way to make
library holdings available to the linked data space. Surely we'll need
at least an identifier for each library. At least URIs piggy-back on the
domain system, which already exists.
Definitely, this gives us something to think about, and I have no doubt
that we could develop some kind of naming/identifying system to carry
this data. Obviously the first step is to figure out what we need to
identify, a kind of requirements study.
>
>>> - PURLs v. agency domains
>
> I would prefer persistent identifiers to cool URIs in this case. But the
> PID discussion should not concentrate on PURLs only. There are three
> other persistent identifier systems (DOI, Handle and URN) which are more
> popular and better standardized.
What I dislike about the persistent identifier is that you lose the link
to the originating agency that you have in the URI. That might be just a
"human thing" - that I feel better when looking at the URI that I can
see WHO is responsible. ARKs, of course, give you both, at least in
theory. Is anyone using the "?" feature of ARKs that lets you query for
that information? Should such info be part of our best practices?
kc
>
>>> - what should the URI resolve to?
>
> URN-related RFCs are currently being revised (see
> http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/urnbis/). I am currently writing a new
> version of RFC 2483, which specifies the resolution services URN can
> provide. In the present RFC 2483 the list of services is fixed. RFC
> 2483bis will be based on the idea that IANA should establish a registry
> of informal and formal resolution services. Then URN user communities
> could register new services at will (and parameters to these services,
> for instance for requesting descriptive metadata about the resource in
> different formats).
>
> Existing persistent identifier systems provide a diverse set of
> services. With ARK, for instance, it is possible to check the
> preservation commitment of the organisation holding a resource. I don't
> know if the PID systems will become more homogeneous in this respect in
> the future.
>
> Nobody knows what the URIs utilized within this initiative should
> resolve to, but I am sure that the mechanism to be built should be
> flexible so that it can be adjusted to meet the future needs we don't
> foresee yet.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Juha
>
>>>
>>> That kind of thing.
>>>
>>
>> Does anyone know an answer to any of these questions? Therefore, I
>> think, no URI is better than no URI at all. Use brief and simple and
>> easily memorized codes for vocabularies like the terms in 337-338, and
>> use IDnumbers for names and subjects and titles.
>> Any implementation can easily relate them to all sorts of URIs that may
>> be in current use or follow best practice or resolve to something
>> useful for the purpose at hand. Verbal terms need changes and are
>> language-bound, URLs are perishable, only codes and numbers are robust,
>> easy to handle, and versatile.
>>
>> B.Eversberg
>
--
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
|