I don't have all of the readings in front of me at the moment, so I'm going to just do a brief commentary on them as a whole.
I have to say that I'm still confused by the concept of DOI's. Unfortunately I read the Lynch article last...I feel like reading that one first would have perhaps made things a bit clearer. I understand the motivation behind developing a DOI system, in particular the concept of persistence. However, I do not necessarily how they would work. Lynch raised some good points that helped me to understand that this system is not yet fully fleshed out, and that was helpful. In particular the statement that "Today's standard browsers do not yet understand URNs and how to invoke resolvers to convert them to URLs, but hopefully this support will be forthcoming in the not too distant future."
I suppose one of the main things that confused me was the need for something similar to an ISBN for digital content. Perhaps (probably) I am over-simplifying things, but it seems to me that an ISBN or ISSN are necessary because large numbers of copies exist for printed works. For most digital content, only one or a small few copies exist and this/these can be accessed by multiple users concurrently. To be honest, I am not well versed in Intellectual Property or Copyright issues at all, and this is probably what is confusing me the most.
Another thing that stood out to me was the issue of not being able to learn an object's DOI unless the object carries it as a label. If I wanted to know the ISBN of a particular book, there are ways for me to find it by searching with other, known identifiers such as the title. It seems to me that there is a huge issue in general with the naming of web-based content. Digital files can be given filenames that could serve as some sort of searchable identifier, but in general web pages and sites that host digital content are haphazardly named and authoring information is inconsistently revealed, if at all.
Lesk and Arms Chapter 9 were straightforward and I do not really have much to say about them. In particular, Arms provided a good refresher for me on some concepts that I am somewhat familiar with, but could always learn more about!
I hope this was sufficient for this week's posting...
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2 comments:
"...an ISBN or ISSN are necessary because large numbers of copies exist for printed works. For most digital content, only one or a small few copies exist..."
I wonder whether that's true. One of the biggest problems with digital content (from the standpoint of Intellectual Property)is the idea that it can be copied easily and endlessly, unlike books.
Also, as you know, the ISBN doesn't tell one copy of a book from another, just editions and printings. So the same ISBN can be accessed any number of times concurrently, as well--just not from the same library.
Some digital content is also limited in how many concurrent accesses it allows. Libraries have limited numbers of "seats" for online journals, for instance. Though I think that's more an exception than a rule, as far as multiple simultaneous accesses to digital content goes. (In general, you're only limited by server bandwidth. And except in the case of something being farked, that's unlikely to be all that limiting.)
... You know, I'm not sure I have an overarching point, here, but I just kind of wanted to add all those thoughts in and see whether that affects your opinion on all of this or not.
That was sort of what I was trying to get at...My understanding was basically that an ISBN/ISSN identifies a copy of X, and I don't see an easy digital counterpart for that, other than with downloadable files.
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