Re: ISSN for RFC Series under Consideration

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 5/21/08 5:39 PM, "Brian E Carpenter" <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Possibly not, but there is still a crusty old world of academic
> publications with traditional reference styles out there, and an ISSN
> will make it much more straightforward to cite RFCs in peer-reviewed
> publications. +1 that it's a no-brainer.

Hi - I'm really not trying to be a contrarian, just trying to
sort through the actual issues here.  I don't think I've ever seen
a reference that included an ISSN.  I've also never seen one
used as a subject header (index term) in cataloging.  The only
time I've personally seen them used is as *descriptive* information
in a  catalog (library catalog, publisher's catalog, etc.).  I'm
sure someone will be happy to dig up a counterexample but
I do think they're pretty unusual.  Really, what are the odds
that someone knows the ISSN but not the title or the author or
the publisher or ... ?

The practical benefit I see here is getting the Library of
Congress (and who knows?  maybe the British Library, etc.)
to catalog the series as a series, but again I'm unclear on
the practical benefit, since RFCs are incredibly easy to find
*as* RFCs; that is to say, by the information by which the
series will be cataloged and classified.

I don't see any disadvantage to doing it, it's just that I
can't see much advantage, either.  I figure we should just
go ahead and do it and not have any expectations that the
RFCs will be any more accessible, any more searchable, etc.
More like a change in status than a change in substance.

Melinda

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