bnf Namespace of identifiers used by the Bibliothèque nationale de France Bibliothèque nationale de France Quai François Mauriac 75013 PARIS http://www.bnf.fr Emmanuelle Bermes emmanuelle.bermes@bnf.fr +33 (0)1 53 79 42 40 An 'info' URI with namespace 'bnf' takes the form: info:bnf/<bnf-context>/<sub-context> bnf-context bnf-context = ALPHA *(ALPHA / DIGIT ) i.e. alphanumeric with leading alphabetic character. Values of <bnf-context> correspond to naming authorities assigned by the national library of France and registered at http://bibnum.bnf.fr/identifiants/bnFInfoURI.html. sub-context sub-context = sub-context-component *("/" sub-context-component) ["#" component] sub-context-component sub-context-component = pchar *(pchar) The value of <sub-context-component> is an alphabetic string assigned by the national library of France and corresponding to the name of a specific data dictionary. component component = pchar *(pchar) The value of <component> is an alphabetic string assigned by the national library of France and corresponding to the name of an element inside a specific data dictionary. All data dictionaries are declared in the national library of France preservation system documentation. When applicable, they are published at http://bibnum.bnf.fr. Data dictionaries are expressed using a human readable format and can also be formalized according to a machine readable format such as XML schema, RDFS, OWL. pchar (and others) pchar is as defined in RFC 3986, that is: pchar = unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" / "@" unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~" pct-encoded = "%" HEXDIG HEXDIG sub-delims = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")" / "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "=" ALPHA, DIGIT, AND HEXDIG are as defined in RFC 2234: upper or lower case alphabetic (A-Z / a-z), decimal digit (0-9), and hexadecimal digit (DIGIT / "A" / "B" / "C" / "D" / "E" / "F") respectively. Percent Encoded Characters Percent Encoded Characters are used in the rare cases where non US-ASCII characters appears in the URI. http://bibnum.bnf.fr/identifiants/bnFInfoURI.html All identifiers in the info:bnf namespace are case-sensitive. info:bnf/spar/structure#set info:bnf/spar/representation#thumbnail info:bnf/rights/eventType#birth The info:bnf is primarily used to assign URIs to classes and properties in data dictionaries that are intended to be expressed in RDF. These URIs correspond to abstract concepts and they don't need to be actionable or to dereference a resource. The BnF is using another persistent identifier scheme (ARK) for resources that need to be dereferenced such as digital objects, web documents, etc. The info URIs are meant to be easily readable for ease of use in the system (for instance, to construct a RDF ontology or to query it with SPARQL) so they are composed with semantic elements rather than opaque strings. More information on the use of identifiers can be found at http://bibnum.bnf.fr/identifiants/index.html No service mechanisms are at present defined.