PURLs

[weibel at oclc.org]

Nick Arnett asks:

> However, as Vianne Sha asked, why is this being proposed in addition to the
> URN/URC work that's been underway for quite a while?  I'm a bit surprised
> that the announcement didn't even acknowledge that work.  They should at
> least be coordinated so that they are compatible.

The PURL work has indeed been strongly influenced by OCLC's active
participation in the IETF Uniform Resource Identifier working groups.
There is nothing incompatible between PURLs and ongoing URN work.  OCLC
will continue to participate actively in the consensus building process
concerning URNs in the IETF and will support the results of that
process as it is deployed.    

PURLs satisfy most of the requirements of URNs in a technology that is
deployed today, that can be applied to the task of maintaining catalogs
of internet resources today, and that can be transitioned smoothly into
the URN architecture once it is deployed.

The OCLC PURL Team

Erik Jul      jul at oclc.org
Eric Miller   emiller at oclc.org
Keith Shafer  shafer at oclc.org
Vince Tkac    tkac at oclc.org
Stu Weibel    weibel at oclc.org