Pointing to the documentation and saying "one of these" isn't going to work,
I'm afraid. Most important is to make sure that the syntax is consistent
with URI syntax. Where the syntax of the identifier you're representing is
potentially at odds with URI syntax, you might have to make adjustments,
like percent-encode. So if you're going to register sudoc, you're going to
have to understand the syntax to some degree, there's really no way around
it. (I didn't know the lccn syntax, registering it forced me to learn it,
and I'm a better man for it.)

I don't know much about SuDoc, and most everything seems to point to
http://www.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/explain.html which doesn't really
explain their syntax. (Though if you look a bit harder maybe you'll find
something better.)

But I see this example: Y 3.C 76/3:2 K 54

That's apparently a sudoc. It immediately raises the following flags:
spaces, slash, colon, and case (sensitivity). For your purposes I don't
think that colon or slash is a problem. (They become a problem when you are
using them as special characters for delimitation, but you're not doing
that.) Spaces, though, have to be percent encoded. (That simply means
replace each occurence of a space with "%20".)

You also need to look at case-sensitivity. If sudocs are case-sensitive, no
problem, if not, then you may want to normalize to either upper or lower
case.

There may not be any normalization issues (other than case sensitivity, if
that). Normalization is an issue only if a particular sudoc can be
represented by more than one string. If so you have two choices:
1. prescribe a canonical form (which is the approach we took for LCCNs).
2. simply describe the rules for determining when two strings represent the
same sudoc (there is no rule that says that two different info URIs can't
refer to the same resource).

You can contact me privately if you have problems.

No, sorry, I don't know anyone at GPO. I worked the graveyard shift there
part time during college. (I had to load mailing machines with junk mail.
Several junk items loaded into a machine which would combine them into one
mailing item. The machine would jam about every tenth time. Worst job I ever
had.) But that was many years ago and that's the last contact I've had with
GPO.

Good luck.

-Ray

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Rochkind" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 3:36 PM
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] registering info: uris?


> Thanks Ray.
>
> Oh boy, I don't know enough about SuDoc to describe the syntax rules
> fully. I can spend some more time with the SuDoc documentation (written
> for a pre-computer era) and try to figure it out, or do the best I can. I
> mean, the info registration can clearly point to the existing SuDoc
> documentation and say "one of these" -- but actually describing the syntax
> formally may or may not be possible/easy/possible-for-me-personally.
>
> I can't even tell if normalization would be required or not. I don't think
> so. I think SuDocs don't suffer from that problem LCCNs did to require
> normalization, I think they already have consistent form, but I'm not
> certain.
>
> I'll see what I can do with it.
> But Ray, you work for 'the government'. Do you have a relationship with
> a counter-part at GPO that might be interested in getting involved with
> this?
>
> Jonathan
>
> Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:
>> It's a fairly straightforward process, See:
>> http://info-uri.info/registry/register.html
>>
>> You should look at a few examples first, go to
>> http://info-uri.info/registry/ and click on a few of those listed in the
>> left column.
>>
>> I think registering one for SuDocs would be fairly easy.
>>
>> The info folks are most concerned that the syntax rules are
>> well-described. I had registered a few of these before they started
>> cracking the whip on that (and rightly so), and when I registered info:lc
>> it became more difficult; you might want to look at that for an example:
>> http://info-uri.info/registry/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=reg&identifier=info:lc/
>>
>> Also, normalization - I suggested looking at info:lccn normalization
>> rules:
>> http://info-uri.info/registry/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=reg&identifier=info:lccn/
>>
>> --Ray
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jonathan Rochkind" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 3:12 PM
>> Subject: [CODE4LIB] registering info: uris?
>>
>>
>>
>>> Does anyone know the process for registering a sub-scheme for info:
>>> uris?
>>>
>>> I'd like to have one for SuDoc classification numbers, info:sudoc/.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure if I can register that on my own, without working with the
>>> US Government Printing Office, who actually maintains sudocs. But if I
>>> have to get GPO to do it, I'll probably give up quicker (unless it turns
>>> out easier than I thought to find the right person at GPO and get them
>>> to sign on -- I doubt it!). Or if the registration process is really
>>> long and onerous.
>>>
>>> But if it's easy enough to just fill out a form and get info:sudoc
>>> registered, I'd rather it be legal than use things that look like an
>>> info uri but really aren't a legally registered sub-scheme.
>>>
>>> Anyone know?
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>
>>