Stuart Weibel Senior Research Scientist OCLC Programs and Research

What is OCLC The combined catalog of the global library cooperative WorldCat.org WorldCat Identities

Who am I Electronic scholarly publication Metadata Identifiers Projects in electronic publishing (early 90s the CORE project – Chemistry literature) PURLs – Persistent URLs Directed the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative for 10 years

The web is a registry URLs are one of the cornerstones of the Web URLs are overloaded: Location and Identification Works extremely well… too well Makes it hard to put in place a coherent, over-arching identification architecture for the Web Identity and resolution should be uncoupled in many situations, but… the siren call of immediate resolution is irresistible.

Major conflicts arise between the two functions: The name is not the thing – location, even less so Which rendition of the thing is the one… I am authorized to use Is up to date Is curated, and by whom? How do we manage identity within a changing technological environment?

What then to do? Policies Registries Means of indirection to manage Identity within the resolution environment of the Web

Web or Scaffolding?

Web is a wonderful metaphor, but perhaps something a bit more durable? We want more Coherence and context Mature, durable environments that will help us preserve our work and fix it in the context of our culture Trusted identity and transaction security Typing (of resources, concepts, and links… not passwords) The iSchool is part of the vanguard… go forth and fix!

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