[Asis-l] NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme Published

[Cynthia Hodgson]

NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme is Information Gateway to 
the Web

Working under the auspices of the National Information 
Standards Organization (NISO), a joint task force of the 
publishing and library communities has developed and 
published a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme aimed 
at the identification of information assets.  Information 
assets should be interpreted rather broadly to include, 
for example, documents and terms from classification 
schemes.  The INFO URI scheme is a consistent and reliable 
way to represent and reference such standard identifiers 
as Dewey Decimal Classifications on the Web so that these 
identifiers can be ?read? and understood by Web 
applications.  Led by four NISO members and associates?Los 
Alamos National Laboratory, Online Computer Library Center 
(OCLC), Elsevier, and Manifest Solutions?the initiative 
builds on earlier consultations with representatives from 
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet 
Engineering Task Force (IETF). An Internet-Draft for the 
INFO URI scheme was first published Sept. 25th, 2003 and a 
revision published Dec. 5th, 2003 (see 
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-vandesompel-info-uri-01.txt>).*

Herbert Van de Sompel, Digital Library Research & 
Prototyping at the Los Alamos National Laboratory?s 
Research Library, stated, ?A good example of the problem 
that the INFO URI scheme solves involves PubMed 
identifiers: unique numbers assigned to records in the 
PubMed database maintained by the National Center for 
Biotechnology Information (NCBI) of the National Library 
of Medicine.  PubMed identifiers originated prior to the 
Web, so they are not URIs. As such they do not exist 
naturally in the Web infrastructure because the Web only 
recognizes URIs as a means to identify information 
resources.  So Web applications cannot use PubMed 
identifiers, and hence cannot reference PubMed records 
that are identified by them.  The solution is to turn 
PubMed identifiers into URIs.  The INFO Registry enables 
the registration of public namespaces of standard 
identifiers; NCBI registered its PubMed identifier 
namespace under the INFO Registry?their namespace is 
pmid?so we can now talk about the record with the PubMed 
identifier ?12376099? in URI terms as 
<info:pmid/12376099>.?

The INFO Registry is now available online at 
<http://info-uri.info/> for receiving new registrations. 
This Registry contains all the information needed by Web 
applications to make use of INFO namespaces. Each Registry 
entry defines the namespace, the syntax, and normalization 
rules for the representing INFO identifiers as URIs, and 
gives full contact information for the namespace authority 
for that entry. Moreover, the INFO Registry is readable by 
both humans and machines alike.

For more information about the INFO URI scheme, see the 
FAQ at < http://info-uri.info/registry/docs/misc/faq.html 
>.

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Cynthia Hodgson
National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
4733 Bethesda Avenue, Suite 300
Bethesda, MD  20814-5248
T. 301-654-2512, F. 301-654-1721
www.niso.org