[topicmapmail] Best approach for SIs for ISBNs

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Lars Heuer
| 
| Lutz and me have discussed this issue and found the following
| possibilities for better subject identifiers:
| 
|   - usage of the urn:ISBN: namespace
|     (i.e.: urn:ISBN:0201749602)
|   - usage of the http://isbn.nu/ namespace
|     (i.e.: http://isbn.nu/0201749602 )
| 
| To make the above mentioned topic map more usable Lutz and me are
| interested in the best practise for ISBN subject identifiers.

It's a good question. I think the URN namespace for ISBNs is the right
one in this case, since it is a standardized way to create URIs from
ISBNs. It's difficult to imagine anything that could be better,
really.

The isbn.nu URLs have the benefit that they give you a human-readable
page, but it's not the best imaginable subject indicator, and it will
only work as long as isbn.nu lasts, which is unlikely to be forever.

So all things considered I think I would recommend the URN namespace.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >