Hi Juha,

> My assumption was that the ISIL part of the collection
> identifier will always identify the organisation which owns
> the collection, even if there were an another organisation
> which assigns the identifier and possibly creates the
> metadata record describing the collection.

OK, thanks. But that would require that that other organisation always
liaises with the owner to ensure that they didn't reuse an ISCI that the
owner has already assigned to a different collection.

> At least in Finland organisations which own the collections
> will also be responsible of describing them; I don't think
> that e.g. the national library or any other organisation
> would be even capable of describing other organisations'
> collections. We simply do not know enough of them, and on the
> other hand we'll definitely be busy enough for a while trying
> to describe even our own key collections.

I know this is going over old ground - sorry! ;-) - but (for the
record!) I'm still not clear what the introduction of this identifier
scheme achieves that can't already be achieved now by other means e.g.
the (managed) use of HTTP URIs (or maybe PURLs) as I suggested at e.g.
[1, 2]

In particular, regarding the characteristics you describe here (actually
I think this section covers the devolved assignment of identifiers
rather than their "intelligence"?)

>    1. ISCI should be an "intelligent" identifier
>
> The reason for this choice is the very large number of
> organizations -
> libraries, archives, museums etc. which may at some point assign
> identifiers for their collections. A dumb code would require a strong
> international centre controlling and assisting the work in national
> level, and a network of national centers, each assigning
> blocks of ISCIs
> to organizations willing to assign them. Establishing this
> infrastructure would be costly, and usage of ISCI would not spread
> quickly into developing countries. For instance, ISSN network covers
> approximately 80 countries, and some of them have been unable to pay
> their annual fees. Funding the activities of a large ISCI
> international centre could become a problem.

I think these requirements are all met now by the use of HTTP URIs, the
ownership of Internet Domain Names, and the sensible devolved management
of the URI-spaces within those domains - without the need for any new
standards or infrastructure.

Pete

[1]
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0408&L=dc-collections&T
=0&F=&S=&P=1752
[2]
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0409&L=dc-collections&T
=0&F=&S=&P=3730