I agree with Ed that we aren't in a position to make statements about
"best" identifiers at this point in time, and that the bottom line is
that all identifiers for instances must be URIs.
At the same time, I think that we need to scrutinize re-use of
identifiers in the same way that we scrutinize the re-use of metadata
elements. The rule for metadata elements is that use must be
determined by the definition of the element, and we can use this same
rule for identifiers. Some examples:
ISBN: product number assigned by publisher.
LCCN: number assigned by Library of Congress that identifies a
metadata record in the LoC system.
OCLC number: number assigned by OCLC that identifies a metadata record
in the OCLC system.
etc.
We often re-use these numbers because they are handy hooks into
metadata databases, but we should always use them with their original
meaning intact. I'm all in favor of including all of these numbers in
our metadata because they can be useful, but we shouldn't consider
that any of them actually *identify* metadata that we create. They
always identify what they are originally defined as identifying.
kc
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 9:26 AM, Ed Summers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:50 PM, Diane I. Hillmann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> The identifiers for the FRBR entities are coming--we're just waiting for an
>> agreement within IFLA on the domain name, and they'll be added to the NSDL
>> Registry--with luck by the end of the year.
>
> I think Rob was talking about identifiers for actual *instances* of
> FRBR Entities, not about identifiers for classes and whatnot in the
> FRBR vocabulary.
>
> My personal opinion is that RDA should follow in the footsteps of RDF
> and allow any sort of URI to be used to identify a bibliographic
> resource. One could well imagine RDA users wating to use ISBN URNs,
> natural keys expressed as URLs, info-uris, DOIs and Handles expressed
> as URIs, etc. It seems premature to restrict the types of identifiers
> that oould be used other than requiring them to be URIs.
>
> //Ed
>
--
-- ---
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
[log in to unmask] http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
mo.: 510-435-8234
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