Ideally it would be great if there was a link that kept working with no required semantics in it, that is not specifically ties to the current version of a website, that will always resolve to information about an object.

But, this would not stop any number of additional links also pointing to the same place. I have often wondered why museums do not use the some part of the whole disambiguation used in Wikipedia. For example if I did a search for a painting entitled "Portrait of a Woman" I might want to know that there were in fact 20+ paintings with this title in a collection.

As a number of people have said, titles do change, so any URLs based on them are unlikely to be "permalinks". They can still be used and be useful, but it would be great if they are not the only option.

If I am a user trying to find things on a website, URLs with codes in them are often not helpful, but if I am trying to connect or create lasting systems then URLs with unique codes in them are very useful.

Joe

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thanks Rupert
yes absolutely … and trying to get some Collection Management Systems to automatically record Previous Reference for changes is a bane of my life.
We need a way of telling onward systems of these Deletes and Moves; and when the museum gets a new Collections Management System with a whole new set of
meaningless numbers we need a way of saying ‘old meaningless number’ -> ‘new meaningless number’ too

James

On 8 Dec 2017, at 10:00, Shepherd, Rupert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

and ideally,  ID has some permanence in Real Life being the Accession or Reference that might be physically on the object or document and not the database number from the current CollMS
 
Yes, but: I know we pretend they’re permanent, but accession / museum numbers do change - I’ve worked at a museum with 19,000+ temporary numbers, which, if the original numbers were found, would be changed to that original number. Here at the National Gallery, a work can come in and be dealt with as a long-term loan (L123) before being acquired and accessioned (NG6789). So, really, only meaningless numbers are likely to be permanent.
 
Rupert

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