On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Phil Barker wrote:
> 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]
Yes, correct.
> 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,
To nit-pick a little, I would say that they are 'functionally 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).
You presumably *could* do this - but given the duplication of information,
it doesn't feel like a particularly sensible thing to encourage! :-)
> 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?]
The URN form
urn:isbn:0782140335
is registered. Or, to use the correct jargon... 'isbn' is a registered
URN namespace identifier (NID). See
http://www.iana.org/assignments/urn-namespaces
and RFC-3187
http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3187.html
so I'd tend to use it rather than an unregistered URI scheme.
I don't know why 'isbn' isn't registered as a URI scheme, but my guess is
that the people who wanted to invest the time in registering it felt that
URNs were a more sensible way forward.
For people not familiar with this area, URI related discussions have
always tended to get quite heated and there are some very entrenched
positions. Whether it is better to use an http: URL, a URN or some other
kind of URI is a religious issue for some people. As the DOI and 'info:'
people are finding out, getting any new URI scheme registered is quite
difficult at the moment.
Andy
--
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