Hi Howard,

(Apologies for cross posting.... I'm cc'ing this response to the JISC 
repositories list, which is for discussing general repository issues of 
this kind and also to the CETIS Metadata SIG list as there has been a 
lot of discussion regarding identifiers going on there for several 
years.

As you're probably well aware identifiers are a pretty emotive topic 
that people tend to have rather strong views about!  My current 
position, following the guidelines in the UK LOM Core, would be to use 
URI unless you have a  very good reason not to.

If you're looking for some background reading I'd suggest that you have 
a look at the resources here:
  http://www.cetis.ac.uk/static/identifiers/  CETIS gathered these for 
an international meeting on identifiers a couple of years ago.  I've 
also attached the final report form the meeting below.

The Digital Curation Centre also held an excellent meeting on 
identifiers last year which, to some extent, built on this earlier 
meeting.  You can find the papers from this meeting at 
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/pi-2005/index and I've also attached my 
notes from the meeting below, these are pretty rough but they may still 
be of interest.

Andy also did some very valuable work on developing recommendations for 
encoding different identifier schemes as URIs which you should really 
have a look at.   I'm not sure about the status of this work though so 
I'll send it to you off list.

Hope this helps.

Bye
Lorna




  
  




On 21 Dec 2005, at 11:10, Howard Noble wrote:

> Thanks Amber,
>  
> I know there are a number of possible approaches i.e. Herbert van de 
> Sompel went for DOI as I read this pretty challenging report:
>  
> http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/rapidpdf/bxh114v1.pdf
>  
>  
> Our situation is that we are building repository services with the 
> JISC repositories programme and want to give resources a unique Id and 
> in a way that the network location of the resource can be 'resolved' 
> or derived logically from the metadata i.e. in similar way Resolvers 
> use ISBN/ ISSN to get to books and journal articles. Something 
> compliant with OAI is paramount.
>  
> As we are to start the build soon we'd like to know what current 
> thinking is.
>  
> Howard
>  
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Amber Thomas
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 10:54 AM
>> Subject: FW: Identifiers
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Howard
>>
>> I know when I was at Becta they were talking about handles as the 
>> favoured approach for web services, that seems to be true in OAI 
>> stuff too. As I understand it, it would need a national/international 
>> infrastructure for nation > organisation > online service > unique 
>> resource. The handle looks like a numeric IP address. Then if the 
>> online service changes, there needs to be a protocol for resolving 
>> the handle into the new url.
>>
>> I've just googled for "handles unique identifiers" for something 
>> definitive but can't find a thing! There's an ariadne article from 97 
>> (!) but nothing came up more recent
>>
>> You probably know this stuff but hope it helps anyway!
>>
>>
>> Amber
>>
>> Amber Thomas
>> Project Leader
>> WM-Share
>> Bredon 76
>> University of Worcester
>> Henwick Grove
>> Worcester
>> WR2 6AJ
>>
>> email: [log in to unmask]
>> mobile: 07913 842421
>> http://www2.worc.ac.uk/wm-share/
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:   JISC Digital Repositories Programme list on behalf of Howard 
>> Noble
>> Sent:   Wed 12/21/2005 10:22
>> To:     [log in to unmask]
>> Cc:    
>> Subject:        Identifiers
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Identifiers (unique) for learning, research and teaching materials is 
>> something that seems to hit the agenda periodically so I am not sure 
>> what the current thinking is - could someone send me a paper/ link/ 
>> advice please.
>>
>> I need this to inform our JISC ASK project design.
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Howard Noble
>> Educational Interoperability Specialist
>>
>> Oxford University, Learning Technologies Group (LTG)
>> 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford. OX2 6NN. England
>> Tel. +44 (0)1865 273211 internal 73211
>> email: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>

--
Lorna M. Campbell
Assistant Director, CETIS
University of Strathclyde
+44 (0)141 548 3072
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/