Book People Archive

Re: Re: Possible conference for on-line book publishing?

Derek Pomery wrote:
> Well, creating a basic program to ID a book file in text format would be
> simple enough. 

Technically, it isn't hard to set up a digital ID system.  The hard
parts are maintaining it, and getting a large community to buy into it.
You have to have something that people trust will still be around, and
reliable, decades from now, and that people are going to be willing to
adopt and use.  Without that, there isn't much point in building such
a system.

As you might imagine, publishers of online texts have already seen
a need for identifiers for their digital content that's better than
ISBNs.  The ID system that many publishers are now using is something
called the Digital Object Identifier (or DOI).   Once you get a DOI
prefix, you can assign as many DOIs as you want for what you publish,
as long as they all start with that prefix.  (DOIs can be much longer
than ISBNs, so you don't have the same namespace crunch as you do with
ISBNS.)  Currently, getting a DOI prefix requires paying a one-time
fee of $1000 and agreeing to follow the DOI rules when assigning and
maintaining your identifiers.  If you use a DOI registration agency,
that agency may also charge a fee for registering your DOIs, but
you can shop around for an agency that you like (and I think you can
also just maintain your own registration agency if you choose).
For more information, see http://www.doi.org/

Still too restrictive or costly?  There's a free alternative as well.
DOIs are based on an identifier technology called the Handle system.
developed by CNRI.  DOIs are simply Handles that have been assigned a prefix
that the DOI organization controls. They get resolved in exactly the
same way as other Handles do.  For more on Handles, see http://www.handle.net/

So if you want to assign Handles to your
documents, but don't want to pay for a DOI prefix, you can request
a Handle prefix (outside the DOI namespace) directly from CNRI
for your organization.  This was free last I checked.  You can
also download Handle servers and clients free of charge.  You
can then either register your Handles on your own servers, or
make an agreement with someone else to manage your Handle registrations.

Those who are interested in identifier schemes for their online
texts may want to check these out.  

John