# URN Usage

William A. Weems (wweems@oac3.hsc.uth.tmc.edu)
Thu, 16 Sep 1993 15:38:18 -0500

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    From: wweems@oac3.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (William A. Weems)

    Message-Id: <9309161538.ZM19944@oac3.hsc.uth.tmc.edu>

    Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1993 15:38:18 -0500

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: URN Usage

Mitra writes...

> a) we assign a single URN to this (and pass it around with
> attribute information to distinguish the variant to choose) or
>
> b) assign a URN to each of the variants, with the attribute information
> telling us about the document we have.
>

I agree with Marc Andreessen that "a)" should be the choice since an
information seeker wants "to look for intellectual property on the
network, not 'Gif images' or 'JPEG images'". "The mechanics of which
file format the intellectual property is in is largely irrelevant..."

The Working Group may find the following to be of some help in thinking
through the URI issues.

We are helping a major biomedical society begin publishing established
journals via the Internet. The goal is to electronically distribute the
first journal in January, 1994 using both Gopher and the HTML protocols.
From reading the IEFT drafts and other relevant documents and archives, we
have reached the following conclusions and states of confusion. It should
be useful to see how OUR interpretations of your work actually correspond
to what the Working Group really has in mind.

Assume that the 'Journal of Theoretical Objects' is recognized as an
important source of new information in a specialized field. In addition,
publication in this journal is important to an author because it enhances
his or her probability of obtaining research funding, promotion and
tenure. If, for example, an article exists that would traditionally be
cited something like...

Smith, A.B., and Anderson, S.F. An evaluation of things to come. J. Theor.
Obj. F45, 1994.

...it is our guess that the URN should be something like,

URN:NSDP:ISSN1234-5679::J_Theor_Obj_F45_1994:::

or

URN:NSDP:ISSN1234-5679::F45_1994:::

where
NSDP => National Serials Data Program of the Library of Congress
ISSN => the NSDP assigned International Standard Serials Number for the J.
Theor. Obj.
(Note: Both of the above possibilities are establishing a seperate URN for
each journal article.)

What should be the form of the citation for the journal in the evolving
URI world?

Smith, A.B, and Anderson, S.F. An evaluation of things to come.
URN:NSDP:ISSN1234-5679::J_Theor_Obj_F45.1994:::?

Issues to consider:

1. When subsequent authors write papers in which the above article must
be referenced, they will want hyperlinks to be available that will
allow readers to obtain the cited article. It appears that
author(s) need to know the article's URN in order for either the
author(s) and/or the publishers of the subsequent electronic
publications to embed hyperlinks.

2. Committees will use paper versions of bibliographies to evaluate grants,
promotions and tenure. It is thus, important that these
bibliographies clearly indicate in what journals papers are
published. If the URN is to comprise the citation, the
URN:NSDP:ISSN1234-5679::J_Theor_Obj_F45.1994::: form is needed
instead of the more terse URN:NSDP:ISSN1234-5670::F45_1994 syntax.

3. As technology changes and gopher tunnels evolve into spider webs and
spider webs into things yet to be, authors and publishers should not
have to worry about going back and "updating" URNs so that an
embedded electronic reference in existing electronic publications
can find the current technological rendition of those intellectual
objects.

Thanks for your thoughts!
Bill

    --

    William A. Weems, Ph.D                      MSB 4.218
    Director                                    P.O. Box 20708
    Office of Academic Computing                Houston, Texas 77225
    U. of Texas Health Science Center           Phone: 713-792-5277
    Associate Professor, Physiology             FAX:   713-794-5653
    U. of Texas Medical School Houston          wweems@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu

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