[libdb-develop] Fwd: Identifiers Relate To Manifestations, Except When...

[Morbus I. <mo...@di...>]

 >Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 18:56:37 -0500
 >To: fr...@in...
 >From: Morbus Iff <mo...@di...>
 >Subject: Identifiers Relate To Manifestations, Except When...
 >
 >In 99% of the cases I can think of, an identifier is related to a
 >manifestation. ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs, UPC's, Amazon ASINs, etc., etc.
 >I haven't had any problem coming to this conclusion: identifiers
 >should relate to the physical manifestation of the expression.
 >
 >Except... when it comes to an IMDb identifier. Some of you will recognize
 >my pseudonym from previous discussions and questions about movies under
 >FRBR, and I've been largely silent because I'm coding like mad on the
 >LibDB project [1]. As I was working on the identifiers interface,
 >however, I realized that I'd like to include the IMDb identifier
 >for a particular movie.
 >
 >For example, here's a URL for a movie at
 >IMDB: http://imdb.com/title/tt0368296/.
 >The identifier is "tt0368296".
 >
 >But IMDb doesn't talk about physical manifestations of movies, it
 >talks about the movies themselves: in other words, the expression.
 >The IMDb identifier should be related to the expression.
 >
 >Does this make sense? How are other people handling identifiers?
 >Can anyone think of similar identifiers that are better to an
 >expression than a manifestation? If the IMDb identifier is a
 >rarity, then I think, for now, I'll just relate them to the
 >manifestation and jot a note down somewhere. If, however, people
 >can think of more instances where an expression is a better
 >relationship, I'll have to rethink some things.
 >
 >[1] http://disobey.com/noos/LibDB/

-- 
Morbus Iff ( think about the good things that I did for you )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus