(Hopefully this formats better.)
 
 Ross Singer initiated  this discussion, first on code4lib, and subseqently  (at my suggestion) here and on OpenURL.
 
Unfortunately it caught on only on  code4lib, and the thread there quickly   degenerated into incoherence.  I request that we discuss the issue here,  and/or OpenURL  (and not on the code4lib list)  and preferably on one list   only, and my preference would be here.
 
 The issue, synthesizing Ross's message:
 
 SRU has an XML  schema registry at
 http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/resources/schemas.html
 
 OpenURL  has a registry of metadata formats:
 http://alcme.oclc.org/openurl/servlet/OAIHandler?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=Core:Metadata+Formats
 
it includes (but is not limited to) XML schemas.

OpenURL and SRU are using different info URIs  to describe the same things.

For example:

info:srw/schema/1/marcxml-v1.1  and   info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:MARC21

orinfo:srw/schema/1/onix-v2.0   info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:onix

Is it possible/feasible to agree on  one or the other, or will (must) we continue to use the SRU-registry identifiers for SRU and the OpenURL registry  identifiers for OpenURL?

From my point of view we would need to come to agreement (if any) on this fast (at least agreement in principle), because of a number of initiatives currently in progress, and if we can't then we would just keep using thedual systems.

Comments please.

(I really do strongly request that we resist the temptation to take this thread off-course, like making absurd suggestions that the identifer for a schema should be its namespace URI.  If you want to talk about that, please initiate a new thread.)
 
--Ray