I have been doing some background reading on PURLs (Persistent URLs) and shortened URLs like metamark (as used by the Perl6 developers). It may well be worth setting up my own short/persistent URL server. The PURL code is free for reuse. The main difference seems to be that PURL requires you to register as user to create new references, whereas metamark can be anonymous (but cannot edited afterwards). There are some others to look at. Interesting that PURL was created by OCLC (mainly famous for providing a library cataloguing MARC record service) who seem to be very active in the IETF working group on URNs which may solve this issue more gracefully.
Posted by mofoghlu at February 12, 2003 09:20 AM | TrackBack