RE: Real URLs for real things

Hi Steven,

> So here's a problem statement: express that the author of 
> "The Wasteland"  
> is T.S. Eliot.
> 
> My proposal:
> 
> 	<pto:http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html> dc:creator 
> <pto:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot>
> 
> A URI with a pto scheme allows you to follow your nose in the 
> easiest way possible, because it is right in front of your 
> nose: we are talking about the primary topic of the contained 
> URI, you can follow that URI to find out more information. 
> You don't need to control any server in order to achieve this 
> effect, and it is minimal typing for a major use case that is 
> otherwise extremely tedious to express.
> 
> (You can even pretend that dereferencing such a URI returns a 
> 303, with a See Also to the contained URI if you want).

Or you could use 

http://thing-described-by.org?http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

and

http://thing-described-by.org?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

which works right now, and doesn't require any "pretending" about the
303s :-) See

http://thing-described-by.org/

for details.

And if there are questions around the persistent ownership of that
domain or the continued running of their HTTP server, I think the OCLC
folks responsible for the PURL server 

http://purl.org/

are working with Eric Miller & Zepheira to enhance that system to
provide some functionality in this space, where the service would be
backed by the institutional comnmitment of OCLC. I'm not clear about the
details, but see e.g.

http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/200669.htm
http://prototypo.blogspot.com/2008/02/beyond-redirection-rich-and-active
.html

AFAIK, all of this, as Michael suggests, is being done without requiring
the creation of a new URI scheme.

Pete

---
Pete Johnston
Technical Researcher, Eduserv Foundation
Web: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/people/petejohnston/
Weblog: http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/
Email: pete.johnston@eduserv.org.uk 
Tel: +44 (0)1225 474323

Received on Wednesday, 21 May 2008 09:46:48 UTC