Readme WHAT IS URLib? URLib stands for "Uniform Repositories for a Library" Each Uniform Repository contains a unique electronic document. An electronic document is any set of files and directories. The library collection is the set of all the documents deposited in the repositories. The library collection is distributed all over the net along the so-called local collection. Every local administrator, or simply user, has in his file system the repositories/documents of interest and upon request he can install new copies of existing repositories/documents from other sites or make up new repositories to deposit his own documents. The repositories are said uniform because they are made by using the same construction rule all over the net and, in this way, any of them can be installed within any system file without name conflict. A Uniform Repository (UR) is a sequence of four directories which serves to uniquely specify the location of a document. The chief URLib objective is to allow using relative (instead of absolute) links between repository/documents and making up, in this way, stable hypertexts that can be copied or moved from one place to another without change. At the present stage of the URLib Service development each local collection is served by a Web server. One of the highlights of the URLib Service is to offer a nice solution to the CITATION LINKING problem. Wherever is physically a document in the URLib collection, its access depends only on its repository name. In this way, any reference to any document becomes robust and need not to be altered whenever a cited document changes from one local collection to another. UR SYNTAX AND CREATION RULES The syntax of a UR is: ///....[] In order to garantee that the above path corresponds to a UR, the following creation rules have to be observed: 1. the time interval between the extinction of a "login-id" and the creation of the same one within a certain "domainname" must be greater than or equal to one second; 2. the time interval between the extinction of a "domainname" and the creation of the same one must be greater than or equal to 24 hours (because of time zones); 3. for the same "domainname" and "login-id" only ONE URLib service must be used at a time (because of the one second sleep sometimes needed before making up a new repository). COPYRIGHTS ISSUE In order to respect copyrights and not to duplicate entries, ONLY copyrigh holders (or an authorized person) should make up URs. In other words, the people who may make them up are: - the first author of a piece of work (if the copyright has not been transfered to a publisher or with the permission of the publisher); - the coauthor of a piece of work when replacing the first author and with his permission; - the publisher of a piece of work (once the copyright has been transfered by its author(s)); - someone with the permission of a copyright holder; OBSERVATION After a copyright transfer, the original UR will be or not removed depending on the copyright policy exclusivity. MORE INFORMATION Please, contact banon@dpi.inpe.br Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Roberto de Alencar Lotufo, Ana Lucia Bezerra Candeias, Joao Ricardo de Freitas Oliveira, Danton Nunes, Eric Henri Menu, Marco Antonio Carvalho Pessoa, Juan Carlos Pinto de Garrido, Virginia Ragoni de Moraes Correia, Ricardo Cartaxo Modesto de Souza, Joao Benedito Diehl, Segio Donizete Faria, Gilberto Camara, Dominique Jeulin and Etienne Decenciere, Jander Moreira and many others for their comments and support. "Toute oeuvre est l'oeuvre de bien d'autres choses qu'un "auteur"" Paul Vale'ry (1871-1945) (Le Monde, Selection Hebdomadaire Edition Internationale, Jeudi 27/7/95, p.10) "Toda obra e' a obra de muitas outras coisas ale'm de um "autor"" (traducao por G. J. F. Banon e M. A. Carvalho) "Any work is the work of many more things than just an "author"" (translation by G. J. F. Banon e M. A. Carvalho) First version: August 1995 Last change: December 1998. end_Readme