I agree - I think that this would be a useful exercise. One thing that we need to be clear about, however, is the difference between museums and collections. It seems to be common practice that objects belong to collections but collections can then be dispersed across more than one museum. I think we are talking about documentation practice here and the ability to uniquely identify objects and the collections they belong to. In this discussion I would feel more comfortable talking about collections (which belong to museums/institutions/individuals) rather than museums/institutions themselves when it comes to forming the UID. So in Joern's example it would be a GUID based on a collection acronym (which may or may not be synonymous with the institution) and a country code and a character set.
My preference would be to go Country-Collection-Number. My reason for this is that it follows a natural progression focussing in on the object. The use of standard ISO country codes will allow a breakdown at country level and would allow countries such as the UK, which have already addressed the problem of uniquely identifying collections, to continue to use current numbers simply by adding the appropriate suffix (so OXCMS:1976.27.67, which is already nationally unique could become internationally unique if rendered as GBR:OXCMS:1976.27.67). There may be better approaches than the MDA/Collections Trust one, in which case a working group could issue guidelines for codifying collections. Of course, it is always possible that the Collections Trust could be persuaded to act as a global registrar, charging a small registration fee to cover costs of issuing codes. But then this is probably the stuff of discussion for a working group..... Best wishes, Matthew Dr Matthew Stiff 19 Riverside Road Oxford OX2 0HT (t) +44 1865 425982 (m) +44 7939 151510 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of martin Sent: 16 December 2008 12:33 To: [email protected] Cc: crm-sig; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] URI policies Dear All, I think the whole stuff virtually "cries out" for a working group topic for CIDOC. Again the libraries seem to are more conscious about identity than the museum people, following Joerns message. I wonder if we have really all understood the relevance of the issue. I wonder why the SEmantic web community has not dealt with it either.... Best, Martin Joern Sieglerschmidt wrote: > Dear all, > the problem of URN, URI, GUID (generally PI) was discussed in an EU > project proposal PICCS and will be discussed for the coming German > Digital Library. Not very familiar with all the RDF, OWL, etc. stuff I > would prefer a GUID based on a institutional acronym (could be integers) > and a country code + character set (either the institutional > identification number or a set of integers). The problem is that there > must be an administrative effort to guarantee the uniqueness of the > first component. The rest is up to the institution. There exists neither > in Germany nor in the EU an institution covering all ch domains and > organizing this administrative effort. The German National library > provide the uniqueness of the URN for German libraries. Other ch > institutions are not covered. > Joern > > martin schrieb: > >> Dear All, >> >> I suggest to discuss in more details policies to use URIs in RDF or >> OWL instances. >> >> For instance, how to describe a museum: >> >> How to distinguish the Website from the Actor, if we refer to the >> museums domain name: >> MUSEUM/http://www.gnm.de/ ? >> >> http://www.gnm.de/MUSEUM ? >> http://www.gnm.de/ACTOR? >> >> If we have a museum URI, we could generate all object IDs by inventory >> number + museum URL: >> >> http://www.gnm.de/OBJECT/AB_45678900_1870 ? >> http://www.gnm.de/PHYSICAL_OBJECT/... ? >> http://www.gnm.de/CRM_E19/... ? >> >> Does anyone know, if the Getty ULAN suggests a good practice for URIs >> for ULAN entries? >> >> I believe these are issues that should be easy to resolve, and should >> be quickly resolved. >> >> More complicated: How to you make a URI out of an postal address. Any >> idea, examples??? >> >> Best, >> >> Martin > > -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 | Principle Researcher | Fax:+30(2810)391638 | | Email: [email protected] | | Center for Cultural Informatics | Information Systems Laboratory | Institute of Computer Science | Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) | | Vassilika Vouton,P.O.Box1385,GR71110 Heraklion,Crete,Greece | | Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl | -------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Crm-sig mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
