[Sigia-l] FW: [DIGLIB] NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme Published

[Eric Scheid]

This is interesting. Especially nice to notice the rules for normalization
of lccn identifiers into info: URIs (what to chop, zero-left-fill, etc).

Does anyone know if ISBN have their own URI name space, outside of info?
Similarly for UPC?

e.

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From: "Cynthia Hodgson" <chodgson at niso.org>
Date: 16 January 2004 10:14:59 AM
To: <niso-press at list.niso.org>(NISO Press List)
Subject: [DIGLIB] NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme Published

For Immediate Release

Contact: 
Maryann Karinch (pr at karinch.com)
970-577-8500

NISO-Sponsored INFO URI Scheme is Information Gateway to the Web
Publishing and Library Communities Join Forces to Facilitate and
Expedite Representation of Standard Identifiers such as Library
of Congress Control Numbers on the Web

Bethesda, MD - January 14, 2004 - 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

<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 goal of INFO is to act as a bridging mechanism to the Web by
providing a lightweight means for registering public namespaces
used for the identification of information assets," said Tony
Hammond, Advanced Technology Group at Elsevier, a world-leading
publisher of scientific, technical and medical information
products and services. "We see INFO as an enabling technology for
the library, publishing and media communities -- a way to
facilitate and speed the growth of the Web as a truly global
information place beyond a basic document repository. The Library
of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, and NASA are among
those organizations that have already registered public
namespaces with the INFO Registry."

"There are different ways to represent these identifiers on the
Web," explained Pat Harris, NISO's Executive Director, "but the
INFO URI scheme really simplifies matters. As a Web user, you
aren't likely to see the scheme in action on your screen -- for
example, <info:lccn/2002022641>, -- because it's an under-the-
hood way of communicating the identity of an information asset to
a Web application." 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>.

About NISO NISO, a non-profit association accredited by the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies,
develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage
information in our changing and ever-more digital environment.
NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the
full range of information-related needs, including retrieval,
re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation. www.niso.org

* Both Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and Uniform Resource
Names (URNs) are types of URIs. While URLs are locators, or
addresses, on the Web, URNs are names on the Web. The INFO URI
scheme is a special type of URN which complements regular URNs
but is designed to be simpler and more convenient both to manage
and to use.


======================================================
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

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