This may be off-topic to this list, so this is the last longish post
I'll put here, unless someone thinks it deserves attention here.
Unless anyone says something, I'll go over to openbookmarks.org's list
to take this conversation forward.

> I think we've got two types of "units" being discussed here. One is
> the actual sections of the book, as defined by the publisher or
> organizer: chapters, table of contents, index, bibliography... etc.
> Those should be the same for every instance of the book.

Yes.

I'm trying to find a web-friendly citation system that lets me link
inside a printed work using a globally shared and authored URL scheme
that establishes a canonical permalink.

I want to be able to reference the smallest explicitly labeled
section, as defined by the author.

Like a web page has anchors that can be linked to, I want to be able
to overlay an anchor system over top of printed works so that I can
write real URLs to printed content.

What I want is similar in purpose to citations, as described by:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation

However, it's distinct from that, because the common citation
mechanism has historically been the page number for printed works.
Page numbers don't feel like a unit of web content -- they seem firmly
tied to the print medium.

So, as an example of what I'm shooting for, the following author has
already done this with his book:

  http://book.personalmba.com/bootstrapping/  (full of promotional material)

Even though this page is full of promotional material, the link itself
has value, because now I can refer to that small section of the book
and talk about my own ideas, relative to that section.

And I can do so in a web-friendly way, with a meaningful URL.

What if I there was a site that allowed its users to *create* a URL
taxonomy for an existing printed work (minus the promotional feel in
my example)?  Now if a world-canonical permalink exists, I can reuse
it.  If not, I can create a world-canonical permalink that I can use
*and* that others can use, who come after me.

Some links would survive over minor revisions of a printed work,
however, major rewrites of a work would possibly invalidate a
significant part of the link structure, so maybe there isn't a
Work-level concept here.  It feels like there might be.

> The other is a way to "bookmark" any part of the text in an ad hoc manner.
> This is NOT universal, and anyone can create a new bookmark to suit their
> needs.

I'm less interested in these kind of ad-hoc text bookmarks.

John...
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