Yeah, I thought of the URI encoding issue, that's easy enough to deal 
with, makes sense.

I have no idea how to tell if SuDocs are case sensitive or not. But they 
ARE all assigned by the GPO, and look-up-able in the GPO catalog.  Yeah, 
they have to be URL encoded, certainly, but can't we just say "must be a 
valid SuDoc class (including book number) assigned by the GPO, but [url 
encode it]."  This can't be the only use case for essentially arbitrary 
strings assigned by a third party controlling authority, that you want 
to make into an info: uri, right?  

But maybe I'll try doing the best I can, with or without GPO assistance 
(Ed Summers said he thought he might know somebody at GPO interested in 
identifiers), and maybe run it by you? 

If this ends up being a huge time sink -- I'm probably going to give up, 
and just use my own illegal info:sudoc identifiers that aren't really 
registered at all, which would be bad, but I need a sudoc URI and don't 
have a huge amount of time to sink into doing it 'right'.

Believe me, I have already spent quite a bit of time with that document 
you reference. It was written for an earlier era, clearly.

Jonathan

Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:
> 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
>>>>         
>>>       
>
>