[OAI-implementers] OAI Identifiers

[Simeon Warner]

If I recall, when the oai identifier scheme was proposed it was felt that
benefit of a layer of abstract permitting persisitence of ids even if URLs
change outweighed the possible registration difficulties. Note that the
schema says:
    <!-- * A "repositoryIdentifier" that is a unique identifier for a -->
    <!-- repository.  Its uniqueness will be tested as part of a -->
    <!-- registration process.  The repositoryIdentifier is case -->
    <!-- sensitive and may contain the characters [a-z]|[A-Z]|[0-9] -->
    <!-- e.g. arXiv, VTETD. -->

Note also that OAI-PMH does not mandate this scheme and not all registered
repositories have chosen to use it.

Cheers,
Simeon

On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Tim Brody wrote:
> A thought on OAI identifiers, at the moment the "repository" bit of
> identifiers is somewhat arbitrary, and could quite easily lead to conflicts.
> How about using the repository URL (or partial URL) to make up the
> identifier, e.g.:
> arXiv.org => oai:org:arXiv:sub-arxiv/xxx
> CogPrints => oai:uk:ac:soton:cogprints/xxx
> 
> Which also makes the identifiers a little more informative?
> (especially for institutional archives which might be
> oai:country:ac:institution:server:paperid)
> 
> All the best,
> Tim.