Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

Extending our previous discussion about how the proposed rel="identifier" is different from rel="canonical" (spoiler alert: "canonical" is only for pages with duplicative text ), here I summarize various discussions about why we can't use rel="bookmark" for the proposed scenarios .  We've already given a brief review of why rel="bookmark" won't work (spoiler alert: it is explicitly prohibited for HTML <link> elements or HTTP Link: headers) but here we more deeply explore the likely original semantics.  I say "likely original semantics" because: the short phrases in the IANA link relations registry ("Gives a permanent link to use for bookmarking purposes") and the HTML5 specification ("Gives the permalink for the nearest ancestor section") are not especially clear, nor is the example in the HTML5 specification.  rel="bookmark" exists to address a problem, anonymous co...

The rel="identifier" draft has been submitted to the IETF.  Some of the feedback we've received via Twitter and email are variations of 'why don't you use rel="canonical" to link to the DOI?'  We discussed this in our original blog post about rel="identifier" , but in fairness that post discussed a great deal of things and through updates and comments it has become quite lengthy.  The short answer is that rel="canonical" handles cases where there are two or more URIs for a single resource (AKA " URI aliases "), whereas  rel="identifier" specifies relationships between multiple resources. Having two or more URIs for the same resource is also known as " DUST: different URLs, similar text ".  This is common place with SEO and catalogs (see the 2009 Google blog post and help center article about rel="canonical").  RFC 6596 gives abstract examples, but below we will examine real world e...

On July 20-22, I was at the NDIIPP Partners Meeting in Arlington VA, along with Martin Klein and Michele Weigle . The Library of Congress has not yet uploaded a public summary of the meeting, but there were a number of interesting additions to previous NDIIPP Partners Meetings (edit: the meeting slides are now available). First, there were keynotes from both the Librarian of Congress , James Billington , as well as the Archivist of the United States , David Ferriero . There was also a ceremony to commemorate the charter members (which includes ODU CS ) of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA). I don't think the NDSA has a canonical web site yet, so the iPRES 2009 paper by Anderson, Gallinger & Potter is probably the best available description (edit: LC has announced a NDSA web site ). There was a theme of exploring the questions about "why we should care about digital preservation". The Library of Congress debuted this video, now available on th...