Nancy J. Hoebelheinrich wrote:
[ in reply to Andy Powell's comments on URNs/URIs]
>
> ### Regarding your comment #1: The purpose for putting in the element
> name "URN" for the resources on a resource list was to provide specifically
> for the inclusion of the ISBN or ISSN into a fairly traditional citation
> format.
<snip>
> Now, if as you suggest, we could use the LOM 1.1.1:General.Identifier.Entry
> and the 1.1.2:General.Identifer.Catalog set to "URI", we would probably
> need to specifiy in the Best Practices section of our Base Spec that the
> ISBN and/or ISSN should be included explicitly when available for purposes
> of stripping it out and including it into a citation format if / when it is
> necessary or desirable to display the information in that way. It becomes,
> in effect, an implementation issue. That might well work. I'd appreciate
> any feedback from implementors on this list or from the RLI WG list.
Hello Nancy, hello Andy
My understanding (and I'm waiting for Andy to correct me where necesarry)
is that this can be done with URIs, the URI would look like
ISBN:0782140335
[though I don't think ISBN is a registered URI scheme]
The URI itself gives the identification scheme as being ISBN, so it is not
necessary to provide that information in the identifier.catalogue element
(I guess if everyone used/understood URIs this element would become
redundant). Thus
<identifier>
<catalogue>ISBN</catalogue>
<entry>0782140335</entry>
</identifier>
and
<identifier>
<catalogue>URI</catalogue>
<entry>ISBN:0782140335</entry>
</identifier>
Are equivalent, and I'm not sure that there is any reason why both
shouldn't be given in a LOM record (and you could throw in
URN:ISBN:0782140335 for good measure as another URI). Andy, if I'm right
that ISBN: isn't a registered URI scheme, which would you prefer: using a
registered URN or an unregistered URI? [And why isn't ISBN: registered?]
HOWEVER,
Given that persitent identifiers are out of scope for this spec [for good
reasons], I'm not sure that we can do more than make some statement in the
best practice guide along the lines of "the standard number or similar
identifier should be recorded in the LOM identifier element
possibly/preferably [your choice] encoded in as a URI." We could also make
a note about it being possible to repeat the identifier.
Phil.
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: 0131 451 3278 Fax: 0131 451 3327
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
