Andy,

I wasn't thinking about local control, I was more referring to something
like ISxN.  Something that we could universally pass around.  Take, for
instance, OpenURL Autodiscovery... well, that's pretty easy for a
journal (ISSN) or book (ISBN), but what if I just had a reference to,
say, "ABI/Inform"?  The reference in question could be to any number of
aggregators that I don't subscribe from, but the point is, I should be
able to find what I'm looking for in that db.

So, I guess I'm thinking externally, not internally.

-Ross.

Houghton,Andrew wrote:

>In MARC-21 authorities the standard identifier for the controlled vocabulary is found in the 001 field.  It's up to the vocabulary owner to determine the structure of what is found in the 001 field.  People use identifiers for different purposes, this is why there are so many schemes.  I doubt that you will every get everyone to agree on one scheme for identifiers.  The library community doesn't seem to have a issue with this, since the MARC-21 format allow other standard identifiers to be associated with a resource, e.g., ISBN, ISSN, etc.
>
>
>Andy.
>
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>>Behalf Of Ross Singer
>>Sent: 04 March, 2005 08:45
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: [CODE4LIB] Authority Control for Databases
>>
>>Is anybody aware of any type of standard identifier for
>>databases?  Or any movement to create one?
>>
>>Matching on name seems very backwards.
>>
>>If there's not a group trying to create said authority, how
>>could something like that be started?  Would anybody else see
>>value in this?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>-Ross.
>>
>>
>>
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