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Richard, Your point about others establishing unique (and 'authoritative') for objects when the museum which 'owns' them fails to do so is well taken. My point about the risk in the wait for persistent identifiers delaying the linking of open data was aimed more at the risk associated with waiting for a central authority to introduce mechanisms for taking care of this on behalf of museums. I believe we should be encouraging, supporting, cajoling, helping museums get into a position where they can mint their own authoritative and unique identifiers. URLs fit these two criteria. Perhaps persistence is a related, but separate issue? Cheers, Paul On 4 Jun 2008, at 11:38, Richard Light wrote: > In message <[log in to unmask]>, Paul > Walk <[log in to unmask]> writes >> >> Do we have a problem with broken links to open data? I don't see >> how if, as Jeremy says, very little data has been made openly >> linkable to date.... > > I'd agree: at this stage in the game I'm sure that's an entirely > rhetorical question. In the long run, however, trusting remote > identifiers is the only way that we can break out of our "data > islands" into any sort of wider web of information. That trust, and > the responsibility that goes with it, cuts both ways: it applies > equally to museum object identifiers and to the resources they will/ > should be referencing, such as place name identifiers. > >> The community *should* care about persistent identifiers - they are >> closely coupled with issues of preservation after all. But, based >> on experience in other sectors, this can also take ages to be >> implemented and adopted by the community. In fact, it hasn't always >> been adopted where one might have expected it to. It would be a >> shame to delay good efforts to link open data while we waited for >> this to become a reality. > > I think I would put this the other way round: if museums don't get > out there and assert a unique identity for their objects, others > will do it for them/to them. This is already happening on dbPedia > for the scattering of museum objects mentioned there: the Mona Lisa > is: > > http://dbpedia.org/resource/Mona_Lisa > > while the identifier: > > http://dbpedia.org/resource/Bedroom_in_Arles > > unhelpfully munges details of three different artworks. > > Richard > -- > Richard Light > XML/XSLT and Museum Information Consultancy > [log in to unmask] > > ************************************************** > For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, > visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk > ************************************************** -------------------------------------------- Paul Walk Technical Manager UKOLN (University of Bath) http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ [log in to unmask] +44(0)1225383933 -------------------------------------------- ************************************************** For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk **************************************************