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Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

> Jakob Voss wrote:
>> I. Identifiy publication => this can *only* be done seriously with 
>> identifiers like ISBN, DOI, OCLCNum, LCCN etc.
>>   
> Ah, but for better or for worse, that's not the world we live in. We 
> have LOTS of publications that either lack such identifiers altogether, 
> or where information about identifiers is not available. (Mostly the 
> former). That we need to identify. This is an actual use case, you can't 
> just dismiss it by saying it can't be done!

Call me pedantic but if you do not have an identifier than there is no 
hope to identity the publication by means of metadata. You only 
*describe* it with metadata and use additional heuristics (mostly search 
engines) to hopefully identify the publication based on the description.

But these additional heuristics are not part of the metadta while a 
well-defined identifier implies a standard of how the identifier had 
been created and how it can be looked up.

The last hope if there is no identifier is to create one. For instance 
our library system creates internal record numbers (such as OCLC 
numbers) which can be reused. You can also define an algorithm that 
creates a hash as identifier like the bibkey I mentioned. But as long as 
there is no identifier there is no identification independent from a 
bibliographic database that already contains the record to search in.

Jakob

-- 
Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de