Juha,

Your cogently argued case is persuasive, but I'd like to hear from
others with expertise in this area before 'casting a 'vote'. 

In principle, I favour dumb identifiers, but I acknowledge that global
ones require a substantial centralised maintenance agency and in the
case of Collections it is difficult to see who that could be or how it
could operate effectively. 

In your highly distributed model, the assignment rules would have to be
very simple to avoid divergent interpretations. I think any attempt to
specify in any detail what an ISCI should and should not be assigned to
would be doomed to failure. Likewise even who can assign an ISCI. So I
imagine it would work on a highly pragmatic basis. The 'what' in the
ISCI rules would be our very loose definition of a collection derived
from Heaney. Anyone (person or organisation) should be allowed to assign
an ISCI, but perhaps it would be useful to have some non-mandatory
guidelines and examples that might say that usually the owner or
provider of a collection assigns the ISCI.

Could there be a 'trust' problem? A centralised agency is a trusted
source of information. In the distributed ISCI model, if someone alleges
some change to a collection, how can it be believed by people who have
catalogues containing a description of that collection? Perhaps this is
an argument in support of using the ISIL as the first part of the ISCI -
then the body identified by the ISIL becomes the authoritative source of
information about the collection. Perhaps the rules should require the
assigner of an ISCI to maintain a metadata record (i.e. Collection
Description).

Looking forward to hearing other views.

Terry

Terry Willan
Standards Manager, Talis
[log in to unmask]
+44 (0)870 400 5038
+44 (0)776 974 0077 (mobile)
www.talis.com



-----Original Message-----
From: DCMI Collection Description Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Juha Hakala
Sent: 24 August 2004 14:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: ISIL and collection identifiers

Hello all,

I apologise the length of this message, consisting of contributions from
me and Leif Andresen.

Leif asked me to pass the following ISIL-related mail to the DC
Collections list:

>Just a few words about ISIL.
>
>a) ISIL covers "Related org.." so library number systems which include
numbers to publishers and organizations also can be integrated in the
ISIL system.
>
>b) ISIL is a new standard. If you look at www.bs.dk/isil you can see
that we until now have four countries in the ISIL system. But I think it
will grow in the coming months.
>
>c) At the ISIL homepage you can find links to the national databases /
lists over codes. ISO TC46/SC4/WG8 decided not to establish a world
covering database, but to use the internet and link from "world level"
to "national level".
>
>d) Later this month I will publish this scheme for ISIL:
>http://www.bs.dk/isil/scheme/version1.0
>
>e) An ISIL is world-wide unique:
>- As ISIL Registration Authority we have the duty to ensure that only
unique codes are registered as ISIL codes. For national agencies ISO
3166-1 codes are used. The national Registration Agencies have the duty
to ensure uniqueness of the national codes.
>
>f)If there is an international need for a collection code, it will be
possible to made an amendment to the ISIL standard to define such an
identifier.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Leif Andresen
>
>********************************************************
>ISIL/RA
>Registration Authority for
>ISO 15511 Information and documentation - International Standard 
>Identifier for Libraries and Related Organizations (ISIL).
>ISIL/RA homepage: http://www.bs.dk/isil
>*********************************************************
>Leif Andresen    *   Email: [log in to unmask]
>Library Advisory Officer
>Danish National Library Authority
>Nyhavn 31 E, DK-1051 Copenhagen K
>
In addition to and on the basis of what Leif has said above, I have some
comments to the identifier discussion on the DC-Collections list.

It is obvious - as some people have pointed out - that DCMI in general
or DC CD AP in particular can not take the responsibility of developing
an (international standard) identifier for collections. This job, like
the development of ISIL, ISBN annd most other standard identifiers
libraries use now or in the future, belongs under the wing of the ISO
Technical Committee 46.

DC CD AP can however suggest that a new work item (NWI), suggesting
development of a (possibly ISIL-based) international standard collection
identifier (ISCI), is written. Leif and myself could then make sure that
this issue is discussed in the next TC 46 meeting. If the NWI is
approved, then the appropriate sub-committee of TC46 forms a working
group which then takes the responsibility of the actual work. The whole
process will most likely take a couple of years, but in this case I see
no good alternative for developing an ISO standard. We already have
identifier for libraries (ISIL) and identifiers for stuff we have
(serials, books); collection level is kind of missing from between.

As far as I am concerned, ISCI should not be an amendment to ISIL, even
if it were partially based on ISIL. But if TC 46 generally sees that
such an amendment would be a viable means of developing ISCI quickly and
efficiently, that's fine with me.

(In case there is something wrong in my descriptions of how ISO works,
then Jane Thacker, ISO TC46 SC9 secretary, will probably throw some fire
and brimstones over me and fix my errors.)

There was also an interesting discussion on the list about whether ISCI
should be a "dumb" string such as ISSN or an intelligent identifier like
ISBN (which in principle tells who the publisher was).

Generally I am in favour of intelligent identifiers for two reasons.
First, they enable more functionality. Basic service one would expect
from ISCI is the ability to search (efficiently) and identify (uniquely)
collections (and in union catalogues we will be able to eliminate
duplicate records once and for all). This is about as far as you can get
with a dumb number. Resolving them in the Internet would be, in the
absence of the global ISCI database, a nightmare.

An intelligent identifier contains a hint - admittedly sometimes
probably misleading - on where to find the description of the collection
and/or the collection itself. If ISCI begins with ISIL, it would be
possible to find a) a given collection in Helsinki University Library,
b) all collections in the library, and c) all (described) collections in
Finland.

Second, intelligent identifiers require less (central) maintenance. ISSN
International Centre is almost 10 times larger than ISBN International.
The former must assign ISSN blocks to the national centres (plus keep
track on which blocks have been given to whom) and maintain the ISSN
database. The latter only needs to assign a group code (such as 951 for
Finland or 0 for the UK and U.S.A). If ISIL were a dumb code, we would
need a strong international centre and also strong national centres,
assigning sub-blocks of the country block to the individual libraries
and other organisations with collections to be described. If there are
thousands of these organisations, the maintenance organisation would be
busy for a while.

Given that most libraries with important collections already have so
called union catalogue codes (and consequently ISILs), an ISIL-based
ISCI would be very easy to implement. It would be obvious immediately
what the prefix of Helsinki University Library would be, and assigning
suffixes (the actual identifiers) would be an internal task. As the
national library we could quite easily administer such a system almost
without additional staff. With dumb ISCI this would not be the case.

Some people commented that when a collection moves to an another
organisation the old ISCI would be misleading. This is a general problem
with intelligent identifiers, and for instance the WG revising ISBN
spent a lot of time on talking about pros and cons of dumb vs.
intelligent ISBN (the new ISBN remains intelligent). But in this case
ISCI would still tell where the collection originated from. And the new
host organisation will revise the description of the collection (and
maybe merge it with other collections); in the end of the day new ISCI
will be assigned, by the new host.

I do not think that we should worry too much about mismatch between ISCI
and the origin of the collections. National and university library of
Iceland probably has nothing about Cornell university library assigning
local ISCI to their large collection of Icelandic sagas. The collection
has been digitised, and the Icelanders could at some point describe
their own and Cornell's digital materials as a single collection of
saga's in the Web, assigning their own ISCI.

The decision has been made to change Identifier element in the DC CD AP
from mandatory to recommended. That's fine; as long as there is no
international standard identifier for collections organisations need to
invent these identifiers locally, and this situation may cause some
problems. (As an aside, if libraries knew that ISCI will be based on
ISIL, they could start assigning at once identifiers that will most
likely be compliant with the future standard. With a dumb collection
identifier, chances for such luck are in practice negligible.)

I'm less happy with the decision in the AP that a collection identifier
must be URI (that is, URL or URN). Since at this point there is no URN
namespace for collection identifiers (and such a namespace can only be
assigned after ISCI exists; having registered URN namespace for ISBN I
know that the process is non-trivial even then) we are in fact saying
that collection identifiers must at this point be URLs. Using URLs as
identifiers (a practice we follow in the DC CD AP) is, alas, an
abomination to me. This is probably because the librarian in me tells me
that call number (signum) and identification are two different things
that should not be mixed. But I will get over this, and probably all too
easily :-) .

What I need now is your view on whether it would be a good idea to
propose development of the International Standard Collection Identifier
to ISO TC 46. If so, then I volunteer to be one of those people who will
draft the new work item. My preference, for reasons explained above, is
an ISIL-based "intelligent" collection identifier. I hope that those who
dislike the idea elaborate their views a bit and suggest especially some
means via which the assignment of ISCI blocks from the international
centre to the national centre and further to the libraries (including
all their branches with collections) can be streamlined and how in such
an environment URN resolution of such an identifier could be organised,
especially if there is no international ISCI database.

Best regards,

Juha Hakala

--

****************************************************
 Juha Hakala
 Director, Information Technology
 Helsinki University Library
 tel +358 9 191 44293 fax +358 9 753 9514
 internet: [log in to unmask]
*****************************************************

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