Table of Contents
~ Introduction
~ DNIDs by Example
~ DNID Form
~ DNID Usage
Best Practices
~ DNIDs as URNs
~ For Data
Providers/Publishers
~ DNIDs as Collaborative
Tagging
An Example of Collaborative
Tagging
~ More Articles
DNIDs and Search Engines
~ Blog
~ People
Introduction
Domain Name(Space) Identifiers (DNIDs) take advantage of the inherent uniqueness of domain names to allow
publishers and users to establish and infer unique identifiers for digital objects available on the Internet. They
are intended as a lightweight supplement to existing schemes for unique identification such as Handles, Digital Object Identifiers, and
the Crossref System. Currently,
DNIDs work best when referring to discrete entities, such as objects in a museum collection, which already have
unique identifiers that can be discovered through web-based tools. back to top
DNIDs by Example
"numismatics.org:1858.1.1" is a DNID that uniquely refers to a coin in
the collection of the American Numismatic
Society (ANS). In this instance �numismatics.org� is the domain name of that
institution and �1858.1.1� is the accession number of the first coin donated to the ANS collection. It is likely
that when it occurs in a web-page this DNID string is an unambiguous reference to that ANS coin. A Google search
on numismatics.org:1858.1.1 shows links to pages that refer to this coin,
indicating that the DNID is an actionable identity leading to discovery of relevant information about this
object.
This example illustrates another feature of DNID's. They require no new user software to be useful. In
fact, the scheme is intended to leverage the ability of Google and other search engines to find particular
character sequences on publicly available web pages. back to
top
DNID Form
A DNID can be formed from one of the following:
- a domain name + locally unique id
- a domain name and a path component + a locally unique id
- a string derived from a domain name + a locally unique id
- a string derived from a domain name and a path component + a locally unique
id
The above is an informal description of the possible forms of DNIDs. A formal declaration is under
development.
Examples are:
- numismatics.org:1858.1.1
- mfa.org:67.1006
- classics.uc.edu/troy:P18.0093:1
- kultur.tr/istanbul:370
The first two make use of the unambiguous combination of a domain name and a locally unique identifier.
The third takes a valid url - http://classics.uc.edu/troy - and derives a DNID by appending a locally
unique id to its host and path components. The fourth uses a valid domain name, an inferred but not official
path component, and the accession number of an object to derive a DNID. back to top
DNID Usage
DNIDs can appear in many forms. We suggest the following typology of usage and best practices:
Placing this string in a web-page will allow that page to appear in response to a
search for the DNID.
- HTML Anchor
with published URL:
This HTML will
associate a DNID with a representation of the object.
-
RDFa/XHTML 2.0:
RDFa is a W3C
standard that allows semantic attributes to be attached to any
xhtml element. These attributes also appear in the meta
informatioin attributes module of the XHTML 2.0 working
draft.
-
Using RDFa does allow the content of a html/xhtml anchor element to be something other than the
DNID:
This is not a preferred usage.
Best Practice...
A combination of html-encoded and RDFa-encoded representations is a suggested best-practice:
back to top
DNIDs as URNs
Uniform Resource Names (URNs) are a form of resource identifier intended to be persistent and
location-independent (RFC 1737,
RFC 2141). A
DNID can be represented in the form of a URN by using the prefix �urn:dnid:�.
URN
namespaces are assigned by the IANA. Many entities have
created URN namespaces on an
informal basis and �urn:dnid� is comparable to these. back
to top
For Data Providers/Publishers
The most complete implementation of the DNID system is at the American Numismatic Society. This
article provides a preliminary discussion of the ability of DNIDs to be
�author activated� and �bidirectional�. back to
top
DNIDs as Collaborative Tagging
As defined in part by Wikipedia, "Collaborative
Tagging", also known as �Social Bookmarking� and other related terms, is �the practice
and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.� By this
definition, DNIDs are tags by which users can make unambiguous reference to web accessible descriptions of
discrete entities. An Example of Collaborative Tagging...
This blog post mentions an ANS coin with the DNID
numismatics.org:1949.100.10 . It is now the case that if you search for that
DNID, the post will appear. This search can also be initiated from the ANS
website by clicking on �Find pages that refer to this ANS
object�. back to top
More Articles DNIDs and Search Engines...
back to top
Blog
The blog for DNID-Community is at http://dnid-community.blogspot.com/. back
to top
People
This site is currently maintained by Craig Thornburrow and was originally designed and managed by Sebastian
Heath and Neel Smith. The content of the site has benefited from discussion on the Antiquist e-mail list. back to top
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