I looked through the Persistent Identifier (PI) wiki page and came up with a few questions/comments.
1) You created the prototype with a stackable interface, something I thought about doing, but now I've been wondering if it causes more problems than its worth. Why would an institution use more than one PI system? How do you determine which PI system generates a PId (base it on collection, community)? What if one PI system fails (URL unreachable, temporarily down) and it is needed to resolve the PId? Could it be possible to create a loop of PIds that resolve to different PI systems while moving through the PI system stack? 2) It is mentioned that HTTP isn't "persistent": Could someone explain why HTTP isn't as persistent as any other protocol? 3) Including special characters in the URL string doesn't seem like a good idea. While they are valid characters, it does take extra processing to encode/decode them from layer to layer. Why not just leave the URL alone or change /handle to something like /uri, /id, or /pid? Why encode the PI system into the URI? 4) Assigning bitstreams persistent identifiers seems dangerous. At the very least, version control and a history function are required by the application and PI system to determine if the PId is actually pointing to what was requested. Also, how are multiple bitstreams handled when assigned to an item? Does each bitstream get a PId? How does a user look at all bitstreams associated together by the item when the PId references only a single bitstream? As far as having a default PI system out of the box for Dspace, I would recommend using a local identifier schema which used the existing URLs. Include the Handle PI system in the release as a configurable option, but not turned on by default. This would remove the fake handle being assigned to all objects and clean up the default URLs out of the box. -- Brad On 05/22/2007 05:06 AM, James Rutherford wrote: > Hi all, > > I've recently started looking into the way DSpace deals (or doesn't) > with persistent identifiers (prompted in part by patch #1690912 and a > conversation I had with Mark Diggory). I've put some thoughts on the > wiki: > > http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/PersistentIdentifiers > > and I'd like to gather some input. I've already implemented everything > discussed on the wiki in a prototype, and it seems to be working well. > Note that the implementation is being done in parallel with the DAO > prototype: > > http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/DaoPrototype > > The most controversial aspects that I've come up against are: > > * deciding which persistent identifier method is used (if more than one > is supported); and > * what the URLs should look like (http://dspace.me.ac.uk/uri/hdl:12/34 > rather than http://dspace.me.ac.uk/handle/12/34, for instance) > > > I'm particularly interested in hearing from folks who already need to > support other identifiers (PURLs, DOIs, etc), but any input would be > appreciated. > > cheers, > > Jim > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ DSpace-tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech
