Identifying a book on the Web today

Hi all,


I've mentioned in other threads that I'm currently exploring from the existing state of book(s) on the Web and hunting for openly licensed and easily fork-able/edit-able books to iterate from.


Right now, the one I look at most is CouchDB: The Definitive Guide, and below are a list of things that can be used to both identify that publication and/or locate an instantiation of that publication (on my shelf, via my browser; or your shelf or your browser). Here goes...


CouchDB: The Definitive Guide

 - identifier

 - *not* a locator...but useful for searching a shelf or the Web to find the location of an instantiation)

 - does not include clarification of rendition, language, or format


guide.couchdb.org

 - identifier (similar to the above)

 - *not* a (direct) locator of the publication

 - useful to humans ("visit guide dot couchdb dot org to get the book) and browsers (type it in, seach for it)

 - lands at a promo page dedicated to routing to distinct instantiations of the book...but is as close to a "webby" non-rendition-specific identifier+locator combo


http://guide.couchdb.org/editions/1/de/index.html

 - identifier and locator

 - specific instantiation--exact rendition, language, and format

 - locates the Table of Contents of this rendition (etc) on the Web


http://guide.couchdb.org/editions/1/de/

 - identical instantiation returned (ToC) as with the above...but completely different identifier (i.e. they're not programmatically equivalent)


http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596155902.do

(also http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596155902)

 - identifier

 - *not* a locator

 - similar to guide.couchdb.org (but less useful to humans)

 - provided routing to distinct instantiations ("buy now")


https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/couchdb-the-definitive/9780596158156/

 - identifier and locator

 - specific instantiation--exact rendition, language, and format

 - (current English version for me...might language negotiation for you...not tested)


http://www.powells.com/book/couchdb-the-definitive-guide-9780596155896/61-1

 - identifier

 - *not* a locator


ISBN13: 9780596155896
ISBN10: 0596155891
OCLC: 935422678
 - identifier
 - *not* a locator

9780596155902
 - identifier -- presumably (given the URLs above) an O'Reilly specific product identifier
 - *not* a locator

urn:x-pdf:b65cf356c8b20307000445bd151b8017000000
 - identifier
 - *not* a locator
 - used by Hypothes.is for finding annotations about the publication
 - generated by PDF.js using this code: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/blob/58c3ea08202becf007c304512c44726719acb508/src/core/core.js#L513

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Apps/O'Reilly%20Media/CouchDB_%20The%20Definitive%20Guide
 - identifier
 - *not* a locator
 - folder that contains my personal, digital instantiations (epub, mobi, apk, pdf) of the publication

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Apps/O'Reilly%20Media/CouchDB_%20The%20Definitive%20Guide?preview=CouchDB_+The+Definitive+Guide.epub
 - identifier and locator
 - returns the English, First Edition, EPUB format rendition of the publication

C:\Users\byoung\Dropbox\Apps\O'Reilly Media\CouchDB_ The Definitive Guide\CouchDB_ The Definitive Guide.epub
 - identifier and locator
 - but it only works for me...offline

Obviously...there are many other identifiers and locators for both the publication or it's instantiations.

Some of these identifiers are used inside of locators. Other locators make no mention of the other identifications (ISBN, for instance isn't referenced from the guide.couchdb.org site...strangely).

So. Which one of these should my Web Browser use when identifiying the publication and/or the instantiation? It has (now) seen all of these in some fashion (location bar, human-readable page contents, machine readable content). Is there one that can be considered "canonical"? Given that domains are *rented* can any URL be considered "permanent"? Does that even matter?

>From a user perspective, I have activities I want to accomplish (search, annotate, read, discover), and some amount of identification (a URL, an ISBN, a PDF fingerprint) to start the process. In the end, I only care about accomplishing my activity--and I want all the technology to which I have access to come to my aid to help me accomplish it.

Defining the technical details and requirements to facilitate end user experiences is what we're here to accomplish.

For those interested in exploring what options we collectively have to solve these issues, please feel free to contribute your own personal explorations of identifiers and locators.

There will be Pros and Cons to all of the things we pick among, and my hope is that we can collectively begin defining them when implementation ideas are put forward.

Thanks for reading all this (if you did ;) ). I look forward to many more such explorations as we move forward.

Thanks, all,
Benjamin
--

Information Architect

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

--

http://bigbluehat.com/

http://linkedin.com/in/benjaminyoung