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Thank you for your comprehensive statement of the current state of play, I was unaware of much of that. http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc3187bis-isbn-urn-03.txt seems like it contains valuable interoperability advice, even if it is never approved. cheers stuart ________________________________________ From: Juha Hakala [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, 21 May 2013 10:38 p.m. To: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum Cc: Stuart Yeates; Maarit Huttunen; Alfred Hoenes Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Instance of ISBNs in MARC records Hello, IETF URNbis working group http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/urnbis/charter/ has produced an updated version of RFC3187 which does accommodate both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. The ISBN International Agency is well aware of this work. See http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc3187bis-isbn-urn-03.txt This Internet Draft is currently out of date, and it is not likely that the URNBis working group will approve of it. The reason for this is that there is no agreement on how to treat URI query and fragment properties. As specified here: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn-03 the initial approach was that the query and fragment are not part of the identifier. The idea was that the identifier as a rule identifies the entire document, and the fragment just takes the user to a specified position within the document. This is in some respect aligned with how the HTTP protocol works; the entire file is retrieved, and the browser uses fragment to take the user into the wanted position within the file. Fragment must then be understood in the HTTP sense of the word; it is also possible to identify logical parts / fragments, but how to do this must be specified separately in each URN namespace. Likewise, the query could be used to retrieve the document, descriptive metadata about the document, technical metadata about the document, and so forth, but the identified resource would remain the same. Alas, the working group could not reach an agreement about how to use fragment and query, and the latest version of the URN syntax http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn-04 omits them, which I think is a problem since query and fragment have been part of the URI syntax since 2005, but still no persistent identifier system uses them. This may be an indication that mixing identification and location information is not a great idea. The authors of rfc3187bis are unwilling to produce a dumb down version of the draft, so it does not look likely that the URNbis WG will be able to complete its charter unless a workable compromise is found. IMHO it would be a bad idea to say that e.g. a fragment is part of the identifier string, since then it would not be possible to use fragments in e.g. the ISBN namespace. All the best, Juha On 21.5.2013 8:42, Stuart Yeates wrote: >>> It's trivial for a computer to calculate that a 13-digit and 10-digit >>> ISBN are the same. >> Assuming Kevin et al. know of the situation, and program for it. > There's actually a case for prodding the International ISBN Agency to update RFC 3187 so that that information is embedded in the URN representation. RFC 3187 predates 13 digit ISBNs. Some of the links and other information appear to be outdated too. > > http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3187 > > cheers > stuart -- Juha Hakala Senior advisor The National Library of Finland P.O.Box 15 (Unioninkatu 36, room 503) FIN-00014 Helsinki University tel +358 9 191 44293