Re: [urn] [apps-discuss] URNs are not URIs (another look at RFC 3986)

[SM <[e-mail]>]

Hi Juha,

[apps-discuss@ removed from the Cc]

At 08:06 02-05-2014, [e-mail] wrote:
>Persistence of works, their manifestations and identifiers assigned to
>them is primarily an organizational issue. For instance, publications
>will survive a long time because national libraries look after them.
>Some of us are also busy harvesting web pages, using the same
>technologies as the Internet Archive. Likewise archives and museums
>will keep some materials for hundreds of years. This is the community
>which needs persistent identifiers and is already actively using them
>(and understands pretty well how to do it).

[snip]

>Some people on this list have argued that
>http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-9658-7 or other PID with embedded
>resolver address is no different from e.g. http://ozymandias.perm. But
>in this case the syntactical similarity is deceptive; URN and other
>PIDs must be resolved before the current URL (URLs) of the resource is
>found, so all kinds of interesting stuff can be done in the resolution
>process before the result is passed to HTTP. And once Resolver
>Discovery Service is in place, it will be possible to drop the
>resolver URL from the URN string, and make the difference between URLs
>and URNs more clear.

There seems to be different groups interested in URNs.  The national 
library group, for example, consider persistence as a matter of 
decades or more.  I don't know whether the other groups (excluding 
people who usually participate in the IETF) share the same view.  I 
agree that the similarity of the syntax is deceptive.

>In practice there will be ISTC (International Standard Text Code)
>assigned to the poem. ISTC can be expressed as URN
>(urn:istc:xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx). Library databases all over the world
>will have work metadata about the poem (once one library has
>catalogued it, it can be copied to the OPAC of every other library in
>the world). From the work record there will be persistent links to
>manifestation records, which in turn will contain the locations of the
>manifestations - physical shelf locations for printed stuff, and links
>using persistent identifiers to electronic resources. When thousands
>of library OPACs have the same metadata record, it is important to
>have just persistent identifier -based links in them; resolving these
>URNs / Handles / etc. to URLs must be centralized. Then it is not
>necessary to modify every OPAC when URLs change.

If I understood correctly the above point is about not being 
dependent upon the technical infrastructure.  I am skipping the 
explanation about "technical infrastructure" as it would take some 
time to discuss about that in this quiet group. :-)

Thanks for the explanations you have provided.  I found them highly 
informative.

Regards,
-sm