The D-Lib Group on Naming in Digital Libraries covers all aspects of naming of digital resources. This topic, which appears simple on the surface, proves to be remarkably subtle when applied to the complex world of digital libraries.
For several years, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was a focus for efforts to develop Uniform Resource Names (URNs). These are globally- unique, persistent, location-independent names that can be applied to any network resource. This work is being continued by an informal group of URN implementors. The focus of the D-Lib group is on the next stage, how to use names in large scale libraries.
User groups that wish to assign names to objects in a digital library are faced with a variety of issues. One type of question is the relationship of names to semantic concepts such as uniqueness, mutability, etc. Are these managed by the naming system or by an external system? In a large library, rules and conventions for assigning names can be very complicated. If users are to see the names, it is helpful if they have some structure to help them be remembered or recognized, but there are real dangers in attempting to embed semantic information into names.
There will be many naming schemes. Some, already exist and must be merged into the digital library. The integration of naming schemes is a technical challenge and an organizational one, requiring decisions about the registration of naming schemes, and the allocation of top-level names.
Few digital objects exist by themselves. They are parts of larger groups or made up of many components. Naming such complex and compound items proves to be intimately connected to questions of what metadata to keep for each component and how to represent the relationships between them. Proposed solutions include composite objects (which contain several separate objects) and meta-objects (which provide links to other digital objects).
Finally, all questions of naming must consider scale. Processes for naming and organizing small numbers of objects may be totally inadequate for large collections.
wya
Last revised: February 5, 1996