[urn] Re: General grumble about incorporating other identifi ers into URNs

I vaguely remember this specific issue with ISBNs and ISSNs popping up a
very long time ago, and the quasi-consensus was that non-URN concepts of
equivalence specific to an existing, or otherwise, namespace should be
handled through namespace-specific metadata retrieved about the thing being
identified. E.g. the general equivalent of an "also known as" field.

The URN "resolution" infrastructure could still be easily stood up. ;-)

-Michael Mealling

On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 2:28 PM Dale R. Worley <[email protected]> wrote:

> John C Klensin <[email protected]> writes:
> > All of that said, I completely agree with you about revisions/
> > updates to existing registrations.   I'm less sure about
> > "previously-existing identifier systems" because I am not sure I know
> > how to define that precisely enough.  I also wonder whether there is
> > another distinction between what might be thought of as ordinary
> > updates and updates that are conditioned on standards (or equivalent)
> > managed elsewhere, for which ISBN is an example.
>
> You bring up furthr considerations which I haven't thought about.  The
> point I was trying to make is that people tend to reflexively think that
> because e.g. ISBNs are standardized somewhere, they can define a URN
> with syntax containing <put ISBN here> without having to carefully
> discern what that means.
>
> Dale
>
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