Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/urn/urn-archives/urn-ietf.archive.9611/000085_owner-urn-ietf _Thu Nov 7 06:28:12 1996.msg

Internet Message Format | 1997-02-19 | 4KB

Received: (from daemon@localhost) by services.bunyip.com (8.6.10/8.6.9) id GAA25374 for urn-ietf-out; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 06:28:12 -0500
Received: from mocha.bunyip.com (mocha.Bunyip.Com [192.197.208.1]) by services.bunyip.com (8.6.10/8.6.9) with SMTP id GAA25369 for <[e-mail]>; Thu, 7 Nov 1996 06:28:09 -0500
Received: from nic.cafax.se by mocha.bunyip.com with SMTP (5.65a/IDA-1.4.2b/CC-Guru-2b)
        id AA20047  (mail destined for [e-mail]); Thu, 7 Nov 96 06:28:07 -0500
Received: from [193.12.104.243] (paf-hemma.swip.net [193.12.104.243])
        by nic.cafax.se (8.8.2/8.8.2) with ESMTP
        id MAA05625;
        Thu, 7 Nov 1996 12:26:35 +0100 (MET)
X-Sender: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <v03007807aea76043b5e5@[130.237.222.114]>
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
References: <"josef.ifi..460:06.10.96.10.44.08"@ifi.unizh.ch>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 10:53:40 +0100
To: Jon Knight <[e-mail]>, Martin J Duerst <[e-mail]>
From: Patrik Faltstrom <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [URN] I18N does not belong in URNs
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
Sender: [e-mail]
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: Patrik Faltstrom <[e-mail]>
Errors-To: [e-mail]

At 11.36 +0000 96-11-06, Jon Knight wrote:
>> ISBNs don't qualify. They are not persistent.
>
>Aren't they?  Crumbs, that means that the one scheme everyone is always
>going on about grandfathering in URNs can't be grandfathered.  Bummer.  I
>wonder if that will stuff up our library OPAC?  How long does an ISBN
>exist for until it gets reassigned to another publisher?

It is at least in Sweden (ISBN series that start with 91) the case
that it is the publisher that decides how persistent the ISBN is.
For most books, most publishers do keep the ISBN very long lived,
and does not reassign them. A new ISBN is given to a new version
of a book, but not a new printing. For educational materials,
pens, paper (yes, most things that a publisher or bookstore
sells can because of the billing system most easily be handled
if the "thing" have a ISBN) the ISBNs are more temporary. I know
at least one publisher in Sweden that only had one ISBN allocated
during one print of a book. I.e. assigned a new ISBN for a new
print. They also reused ISBNs after about a year.

So, to conclude, even inside the namespace of ISBNs, each organization
giving out ISBNs do decide themselves what persistence is regardless
of what rules there is globally for "global" ISBNs. This is _exactly_
why bookstores exists that have very advanced databases to be able
to handle an order of an ISBN that have been replaced 15 times with
new number because of reprints and the case that the publisher
uses the ISBN as an identifier for the specification of that
very print of the book, not the contents.

But, I am not saying that ISBNs can not be used as URNs. In most
cases, for _real_ books, an ISBN is persistent information about
a book. Probably a new ISBN for each edition, but library cards
include information about all possible ISBNs for one book, if
you know one of them. My point is that local descisions for
local parts of the namespace can have local rules for
things like persistance.

   Patrik

--------------------------------------------------------------------
   Senior Researcher, Tele2/SwipNet     Stockholm, Sweden
   [e-mail]                         Phone: [phone]
   urn:inet:urn.paf.se

   In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice,
   but in practice, there is.