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At Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:05:38 -0800, Kyle Banerjee wrote: > I haven't found anyone who buys my take on this problem, but I'm offering it > anyway. > > IMO, persistent URLs are a lost cause and are often an outright liability. > Instead of messing with persistent URLs, the emphasis should be on > persistent identifiers. > > Here's the rub -- no amount of indirection or abstraction can alter the fact > that *people* ultimately say where things are. Purls, handles, and all other > resolution services must be told where the item actually is in order to > work. > > When this doesn't happen (and it often doesn't as I've encountered plenty of > dead purls and handles), finding the real item is that much harder because > you don't even have the original URL which can be a useful access point for > finding related materials and is even helpful for finding items that moved > elsewhere. There is also the issue that a resolution service itself is > dependent on key things that make ordinary URLs unstable such as > organizational changes. > > It's much easier to just embed a unique identifier. As a practical matter it > doesn't matter much how this is done (though there is some utility in having > a predictable URL friendly syntax). The item can move anywhere, access > becomes less dependent on specific technologies, and so long as an indexing > engine that your discovery interface can connect to has access to the item > or metadata, you're set. Hi, This attitude makes sense only if you are used to very bad “persistent URL” systems. A URI is an identifier. Making it persistent is our job. Using a different identifier scheme won’t make our job easier. Adam, you should (in my opinion) have a look at the introduction to the ARK specification [1] for a useful take on persistent identifiers. best, Erik