Re: [Uri-review] Allow identifying issues with ISSN NID

[Kristof Zelechovski <[e-mail]>]

Well said, but the only authority to provide such a PURL is ISSN.org, isn't
it?  (WorldCat.org does not allow to hyperlink to specific issues either.)
Until ISSN.org provides such functionality, there is no way to encode such
information in URL.  ISSN.org is big, it may take them three years to set
things up, if they ever consider it worth doing.
OTOH, an URN has the following advantages:
1.  It is not that arbitrary.  While I am unable to tell what the ISSN.org
prefix will be, I can imagine what form the URN should take.
2.  Until that happens, using a http prefix leads to HTTP 404, which is
uninformative and cannot be easily intercepted by a browser protocol
handler.
What do you think?
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: David Booth [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12:00 AM
To: Kristof Zelechovski
Cc: 'Slawek Rozenfeld'; [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Uri-review] Allow identifying issues with ISSN NID

I don't see any reason why a URN should not be used to name a set of
resources.  That URN would have to be different from the URNs used to
name the individual members of that set though.  What document is
recommending otherwise?

However, I personally believe that http URIs are, in virtually all
cases, superior to URNs.  In essence, http URIs can serve the exact same
naming functions of URNs, but with the added benefit of *potentially*
being dereferenceable via an extremely widely implemented protocol --
HTTP.  This is further explained here:
http://dbooth.org/2006/urn2http/

David Booth



On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 21:51 +0200, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
> Problem statement
> The ISSN NID syntax, as defined in RFC 3044, does not allow to
> identify specific issues of a serial publication.  It only identifies
> a serial publication, as a set of past and future issues.  This is an
> abstract entity and it is not in line with the prevailing URN practice
> that URN should be used to name concrete resources and not sets
> thereof.  While the present state of affairs is acceptable, the
> ability to identify specific issues is missing.