# Re: Yet more URI/URC

Dirk Herr-Hoyman (hoymand@gate.net)
Mon, 2 May 94 06:42 EDT

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    Message-Id: <m0pxvS5-0004GWC@inca.gate.net>

    Date: Mon, 2 May 94 06:42 EDT

    To: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>

    From: hoymand@gate.net (Dirk Herr-Hoyman)

    Subject: Re: Yet more URI/URC

At 9:45 PM 4/29/94 -0400, Peter Deutsch wrote:
>[ Dirk wrote: ]
>. . .
>I'm still not 100 percent clear on who will be using URCs
>and when. In fact, here's a radical thought - are we all
>that sure that URN->URC dereferencing will happen in our
>new system at all?
>
>Maybe this is going to be something that is done back in
>conventional library catalogue systems jazzed up to carry
>additional records and with an extra field to specify the
>URN?
>
>I certainly see the need for URN->URL dereferencing but
>I'm beginning to wonder if (heretic!) all we need is to
>add the URN as another field in all those existing library
>catalogue systems that are out there now?
>
>Naaah.... ;-)
>
Peter, I agree with your last statement, that utilizing library catalog (oh
you non-American speakers :-) systems is the way to access large amounts of
complex meta-data. But, there's several problems with that:

a) Not fast enough to serve for URL lookup aid.
b) Not all publishers will have access to such bib dbs.

The basic idea is to provide for sufficient information such that a client
can select a URL when there are multiple ones to choose from. A real
example here is between a PDF and text version of the same information. We
came to this place with URCs because we kept kicking out the meta-data from
other elements of the URI (not in the URL, not in the URN).

Even if accessing a library catalog were fast enough, these "jazzed up"
catalogs are either not going to be deployed soon enough or they just plain
aren't there. Take, for example, the US-Extension Services. In each
state, 100s to 1000s of publications are produced each year. Many are
short "fact sheets", typically a single page. (And such a fact sheet is
what I had in mind for the above example). These just don't make it into
the university's library catalog. And this is within the academic
environment, where folks are thinking about libraries, it an even worse
situation in non-academic settings. So, it's just plain easier to think
about creating our own micro-catalog, than it is to postulate using a "real
catalog" for such a purpose.

I see the URC filling the niche for a fast micro-catalog. Something a bit
more than just multiple URLs attached to a URN, but less than a library
catalog.

    --
    Dirk Herr-Hoyman                  |
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- Next message: Alexander Dupuy: "Re: Seperating URC format and URN->URC resolution"
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- Maybe in reply to: Terry Allen: "Yet more URI/URC"
- Next in thread: Michael Carroll: "Re: Yet more URI/URC"