Rod,
I'd just like to support your suggestion that DOIs are the obvious choice wherever we need a GUID for interacting with publishers or ensuring citability, and certainly for any elements which may require special handling (e.g. alternate views for subscribers and the general public).
In case there is any confusion over the outcomes of the TDWG workshops on GUIDs, the conclusion there was that different identifier models were likely to be appropriate in different situations. The general recommendation to adopt LSIDs was because they were lightweight at the time of issuing (no need to register them centrally) and could be resolved without a dependency on a single central service. At the same time, the choice of a URN-based identifier scheme rather than HTTP URIs still seems (at least to me) to be a benefit because we want to be able to assign identifiers which (at least in principle) are not tied to the current (albeit seemingly omnipresent) HTTP technologies - many of the objects we wish to identify have already had a valuable existence far longer than the Internet Age. In cases needing a more centralised and potentially robust solution, and where linkage to the publishing world is desired, DOIs are often likely to be the preferred choice.
Donald
On Mar 21, 2007, at 4:21 PM, Roderic Page wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------ Donald Hobern (dhobern@gbif.org) Deputy Director for Informatics Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321483 Mobile: +45-28751483 Fax: +45-35321480 ------------------------------------------------------------