We do just fine minting our URIs at LC, Andy. But we do appreciate your
concern.
The analysis of our MODS URIs misses the point, I'm afraid. Let's forget
the set I cited (bad example) and assume that the schema is replicated at
several locations (geographically dispersed) all of which are planned to
house the specific version permanently. The suggestion to designate one as
cannonical is a good suggestion but it isn't always possible (for various
reasons, possibly political). So I maintain that in this scenario you have
several *location* none of which serves well as an identifier. I'm not
arguing (here) that info is better than http (for this scenario) just that
these are not good identifiers.
--Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "Houghton,Andrew" <hough...@oclc.org>
To: <CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] resolution and identification (was Re: [CODE4LIB]
registering info: uris?)
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
Karen Coyle
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 1:06 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] resolution and identification (was Re:
[CODE4LIB] registering info: uris?)
The general convention is that "http://"; is a web address, a location.
I
realize that it's also a form of URI, but that's a minority use of
http.
This leads to a great deal of confusion. I understand the desire to use
domain names as a way to create unique, managed identifiers, but the
http part is what is causing us problems.
http:// is an HTTP URI, defined by RFC 3986, loosely I will agree that
it is a web addresss. However, it is not a location. URIs according
to RFC 3986 are just tokens to identify resources. These tokens, e.g.,
URIs are presented to protocol mechanisms as part of the dereferencing
process to locate and retrieve a representation of the resource.
People see http: and assume that it means the HTTP protocol so it must
be a locator. Whoever initially registered the HTTP URI scheme could
have used "web" as the token instead and we would all be doing:
<web://example.org/>. This is the confusion. People don't understand
what RFC 3986 is saying. It makes no claim that any URI registered
scheme has persistence or can be dereferenced. An HTTP URI is just a
token to identify some resource, nothing more.
Andy.
