[tdwg-guid] First step in implementing LSIDs

Gregor Hagedorn G.Hagedorn at BBA.DE
Fri Jun 8 20:31:14 CEST 2007


I fully agree with Markus, Dave and Rod. I think the only thing that http-based 
permanent URLs is missing is good communication about the *social contract* 
associated with them. All LSIDs are giving us is a good marketing for a social 
contract, technically they offer nothing better than http (but a lot of 
headaches). If we had a good *brand name*, it would suffice using that brand 
name in URLs. Like in LSIDs, it would draw the attention of humans (managers, 
software developers) to the fact that a different contract is expected. It may 
also help machines to guess about this contract (and machines can easily verify 
then by pulling the RDF metadata).

Assuming "pgid" for "PermanentGlobalID" is a good brand name (I hope for your 
suggestions for better ones!!!) we could use:

http://pgid.institution.org/some/collection/1202398 
- Or - 
http://x.institution.org/pgid/something/collection/1202398

(implying a social contract to use either dns or first element of path to aid 
in recognition of "brand").

If we spend as much effort as on LSIDs in marketing and educating that all of 
GBIF/TDWG intends to use such a brand-name in a special way (no re-assignment 
of IDs, keep resolvable as long as possible, provide RDF metadata if 
technically capable to do so) we would have it.

Gregor

PS Any ideas for build-your-own brand-names for this GUID contract? 

OpenID? BioID?----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203




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