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

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

(apps-discuss list dropped)

Juha,

I found this (both the part quoted below and the rest of your
note) very helpful.  Thanks.  One question below...

--On Friday, May 02, 2014 18:06 +0300 [e-mail]
wrote:

>...
> The library point of view to this is that Shelley's Ozymandias
> has an extremely long life expectancy as a work. It will exist
> at least as long as there is at least one copy left of it, in
> some physical (printed or digital) form. In principle the work
> itself may survive even longer, if 1-n people have memorized
> it before the last copy vanishes (which will inevitably
> happen).
>...
> Now, in order to identify Ozymandias, the following steps are
> needed:
> 
> 1. Give an identifier to the (immaterial) work, and provide
> metadata about the poem.
> 
> 2. Give identifier to a manifestation of the work. The
> identifier system used can be an ISBN, if Ozymandias is
> published in a collection of Shelley's poems. Once the
> identifier has been assigned, provide metadata about the book.

I would assume that, if the poem is published as part of a
collection, the collection appears in a book, and the book is
identified with an ISBN, the mechanism for finding the poem
within the book becomes part of a specification about the book
and its identifier.  That is an instruction about the component
of the book, not what I think would normally be considered
"metadata about the book".  And depending on other conventions
or protocols (in the traditional, not computer sense), that
mechanism might be shown as "page 57ff", "Chapter 5", or
something else.   Some introducing (or surrounding) syntax would
be needed for that sort of mechanism description and one would
probably want it to be different from the mechanisms used to
query, or extract information from, the "metadata about the
book".  

While the distinctions are real, the details may be a matter of
convention.  For example, if the book's table of contents were
considered metadata about the book, the poem might also be found
within the book by asking a question of that metadata and then
using the result.

Is that just about right?  If not, where am I confused?

thanks,
    john