Just to clarify, encoding identifiers as URI's, my suggestion, is NOT "externalizing the information under another URL". It is just picking a standard format for identifiers, the identifier format of the web, to re-use standards and cut down on custom vocabulary. If your 'simplebib' idea made sense, it could look like: 'simplebib' : { identifier: info:isbn:1234556X } or identifier: info:oclcnum:whatever etc. Note that "info" URIs not only don't need to be "looked up from another URL" to "resolve" -- info URIs are actually un-resolvable! While the ASIN http URI is (sort of) resolvable, it still doesn't _need_ to be looked up to resolve. Nothing is externalized. 'simplebib' : { identifier: http://amazon.com/asin/whatever or whatever. Likewise for "OpenURL". Despite the name, OpenURL is, in practice, a standard vocabulary/encoding for citation details, it is not a method of 'externalizing the information'. This is an OpenURL context object in KEV format that identifies a particular book: rft.title=Manufacturing Consent&rft.au=Noam Chomsky&rft_id=info:isbn:whatever Etc. If you want to make up your own brand new citation format, then of course that is within your capabilities. It seems to me that trying to re-use as much infrastructure that already exists is good. Even if that's just re-using URI infrastructure (including info: URIs). Especially if you expect anyone other than you to 'adopt' this. Jonathan Tim Spalding wrote: > Unless someone can come up with a perfect pre-cooked format—one that > not only covers what we need but is also super easy and > space-efficient (we have only 1/2k to use!)—Why don't we just decide > on: > > 'simplebib' : { > > } > > and start filling in fields. I don't think it makes sense to > externalize the information under another URL, at least in the first > instance. That at least doubles the calls involved, and makes whatever > you build dependent on lots of external services that may or may not > work. > > Best, > Tim > > On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> So almost all of those identifiers can be formatted as a URI. Although >> sometimes it takes an info: uri, which some people don't like, but I like, >> for reasons relevant to their usefulness here. >> >> ISBN, ISSN, LCCN, and OCLCnum all have registered info: URI sub-schemes. I >> once tried to figure out how to express an EAN as a URI, and I think I _did_ >> eventually find _something_, but it was kind of confusing and hard to track >> down (The EAN/UPC/etc people have some info URI subschemes registered too, I >> think, but it's hard to figure out what it all means). For ASIN, I have >> been in the habit of using an Amazon http URI, the problem is that Amazon >> really offers several http URIs for the same ASIN, so you kind of just have >> to pick one format. >> >> Oh, and you can do DOI as an info: URI too. >> >> So your annotation _could_ simply be "a URI". And get a lot of stuff. But >> this leaves out a lot of things that don't really have good identifiers at >> all: Articles in popular (not scholarly) newspapers/journals; most daily >> newspapers as titles themselves (don't usually have an ISSN); Movies; >> books too old (or for other odd reasons lacking) an ISBN (or lccn or >> oclcnum). Scholarly articles that don't have a DOI (the majority of them). >> >> Maybe you could use the citation microformat extended to take arbitrary URI >> identifiers? So for stuff without an identifier, you've got the citation >> details, but you can still stick identifiers in with URIs? >> >> And as someone else mentioned, this _is_ pretty much the use-case of >> traditional "OpenURL", and it does handle it well enough: allowing you put >> enough structured citation in to identify the referent for things without >> identifiers, allowing you to put arbitrary URIs in rft_id. But OpenURL is >> kind of a monster to work with. And doesn't deal too well with certain >> kinds of citations like movies or music either, it's really focused on >> published textual materials. >> >> Jonathan >> >> Tim Spalding wrote: >> >>> I was wondering if there was a good microformat. The trick is that the >>> citation format is very much about stuff that gets displayed, and >>> lacks the critical linking ids you'd want—ISBN, SSN, LCCN, OCLC, ASIN, >>> EAN, etc. >>> >>> If people know of others that would work, maybe that's the answer. >>> >>> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Karen Coombs <[log in to unmask]> >>> wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Have you looked the the citation microformat ( >>>> http://microformats.org/wiki/citation) ? Don't know where work with this >>>> stands but it seems pretty interesting to me. >>>> >>>> Karen >>>> >>>> >>> > > > >