Dear all,
Many thanks for the useful feedback on the strawman paper. Chuck is right in that there is a broader issue - is there a form of GUID that will work for everything and is that essential?
I was working on the assumptions that TDWG had already chosen LSIDs as the favo(u)red flavo(u)r of GUID and that, yes, it makes sense to have the same one in as many domains as possible. Hence my attempt to push thinly-disguised LSIDs onto the BHL. However, if it is the case that there is no requirement for the same GUID scheme to be adopted across all domains, then the picture alters substantially and I would be more likely to press for DOIs for the reasons stated by Rod.
There is a BHL workshop coming up on June 12th and I would appreciate any guidance on what I should be encouraging BHL to do so that we can interoperate with the GBIF architecture and systems. I am also involved with the EU-funded project EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy) who want a "virtual library" and I am keen that there should be essentially one system for BHL, EDIT and GBIF to find and retrieve published (and unpublished) literature and documentation.
I have a further question about granularity. I have just seen a demonstration by a major publisher of a system that separately indexes and allows retrieval of all images, diagrams, tables, figures etc. within journal articles. Naturally, this is very expensive and beyond the means of BHL, but has gone down a storm with researchers on trial and is an indicator of the future. Can LSIDs cope with that level of detail?
With thanks, Neil ------- Neil Thomson Head of Data & Digital Systems The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD Tel: +44 (0)20 7942 5294, Fax: +44 (0)20 7942 5559, Email: n.thomson@nhm.ac.uk http://www.nhm.ac.uk