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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dr. Dubowy:</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2018-11-15 01:17, Norbert Dubowy
Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20181115101759.EGroupware.QY0a-nPZZNpiGHCt0XuRUJv@_"> <span
style="width:100%; display: inline; font-family:arial,

helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10pt;">Dear metadata and
cataloging IG,<br>
As we are close to publishing our first set of digital editions,
I would like to hear your opinion on the following subject: Does
it make sense to provide a persistent identifier with the
edition (in the individual file / MEI header)? What is the
benefit, and is there any preference of what kind of
identifier (DOI, or urn, or ...) to use in the case of a
strictly digital music edition (no hybrid edition, not the
rendering, just the coding)? ...<br>
</span></blockquote>
<p>This is a very insightful question. I am no musicologist or
academic, but I would like to reply as someone interested in <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://keyboardphilharmonic.org/">transcribing
the legacy corpus of public domain scores to digital score
formats</a>, and as an experienced software engineer. <br>
</p>
<p>Yes, I encourage you to put in a stable machine-readable
identifier with the edition. And, I encourage you to thoughtful
and clear about what that identifier refers to, and what it does
not refer to.</p>
<p>Identifiers make many tasks easier. For a digital score, being
able to refer to an edition, and the work of musical composition
it represents, and the specific revision within an edition, are
all important and useful. The identifier should be in a format
which software can find and read within the digital score, and
which humans can also find, and copy and paste (e.g. into an
email). The identifier should be stable — once assigned, it should
not change. The identifier should be unique — no other thing
should ever have an identifier which could be confused with this
identifier. <br>
</p>
<p>I am not aware of a system of identifiers for music score
editions. If there is one, someone please cite it, so I can learn
about it. If there is not one, you may have to make your own
system of identifiers. There are identifiers for works of musical
composition, but there may be many editions of the same work.
There are library catalogue call numbers, e.g. in WorldCat, but as
far as I know these are specific to each library, and two
identical copies of the same printed score could have different
WorldCat numbers from different libraries. It would be valuable to
have a catalogue of edition identifiers which would lead different
people in those libraries to come up with the same edition number
for their identical copies.</p>
<p>Consider how you will handle revisions. I believe the lesson of
electronic text and software publishing is that revisions become
more and more numerous and frequent as the representation becomes
more symbolic and digital. Where a book might have only one or two
editions, and one or four or ten printings, the same content as a
wiki or software repository might have hundreds of numbered
versions, for one "edition". It is valuable to have a stable
identifier which represents what is stable and continuing about
the edition, and a separate revision identifier to which
represents what changes within those stable boundaries.</p>
<p>There are a few widely-used and trustworthy systems of
identifiers I know of, which might be useful for your purposes.</p>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://musicbrainz.org/">MusicBrainz</a>
assigns <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Work">Work MBID</a>s for
compositions, and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Artist">Artist MBID</a>s for
people and groups. For instance, the identifier <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://musicbrainz.org/artist/9ddd7abc-9e1b-471d-8031-583bc6bc8be9">https://musicbrainz.org/artist/9ddd7abc-9e1b-471d-8031-583bc6bc8be9</a>>
is a stable identifier for a person known as Чайковский,
Tchaikovsky, and Tschaikowski. The identifier <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://musicbrainz.org/work/ba27a04b-1a26-4771-909e-81b2f8449ff7">https://musicbrainz.org/work/ba27a04b-1a26-4771-909e-81b2f8449ff7</a>>
refers to the 1875 version of 9ddd7abc's <i>Concerto for Piano
and Orchestra no. 1 op. 23</i>, while the identifier <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://musicbrainz.org/work/71b01883-7b2d-488b-91cc-d0d44f182743">https://musicbrainz.org/work/71b01883-7b2d-488b-91cc-d0d44f182743</a>>
refers to an 1879 revision of that same concerto. MusicBrainz does
not have score edition identifiers, that I know of. But where
they have identifers (for Work and Artist and Release and more),
they are unique, stable, reliable, and useful.<br>
</p>
<p>Wikidata assigns identifiers for many kinds of things. The
identifier <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7315">Q7315</a> is the
identifier for the composer Musicbrainz identifies as
artist/ddd7abc-9e1b-471d-8031-583bc6bc8be9. The identifier <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q162935">Q162935</a> refers
to both the 1875 and the 1879 versions of that concerto which
MusicBrainz identifies as
work/ba27a04b-1a26-4771-909e-81b2f8449ff7 and
work/71b01883-7b2d-488b-91cc-d0d44f182743 . Wikidata is also good
at maintaining lists of identifiers in other systems for the
things it identifies, so it is a powerful identifier
cross-reference resource.<br>
</p>
<p>It is also possible to compute stable unique identifiers for the
content of "just the coding", that is of arbitrary. This is done
with tools which can reduce any content (byte sequence) of any
length down to a "digest", consisting of a predefined number of
binary bytes, that is unlikely to match the digest of any other
content. Such digests are known of names like "md5", "sha1", and
"sha256". The sha-1 digest of the preceding paragraph is
426eae7043658f83d2c1e50d77f29b20bb3434e1 . The sha-256 digest is
71fa49b4fa7c6fbe77d4e681c6168ba0eb49c5ba816ae218750a03ca5f265103 .
So, you could choose to define the edition identifier for "just
the coding" as the digest of the MEI-format text of the digital
score itself. Every change to the content, the "coding", will
result in a different digest. A definition like this requires
defining a "canonical form" for the MEI-format text, and defining
what to do about the space in the score for edition identifier
when calculating the edition identifier. Standards like XML
signing and XML comparison have come up with those definitions,
however. <br>
</p>
<p>I am sorry this is not a specific reply to your question. I hope
it is helpful in giving you ideas for deciding what edition
identifiers you will use.</p>
<p>Best regards,<br>
—Jim DeLaHunt, Vancouver, Canada</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2018-11-15 01:17, Norbert Dubowy
Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20181115101759.EGroupware.QY0a-nPZZNpiGHCt0XuRUJv@_">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<style type="text/css">.Section1 {
line-height: 10pt;
}
</style><span style="width:100%; display: inline;
font-family:arial,
 helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10pt;">Dear
metadata and cataloging IG,<br>
As we are close to publishing our first set of digital editions,
I would like to hear your opinion on the following subject: Does
it make sense to provide a persistent identifier with the
edition (in the individual file / MEI header)? What is the
benefit, and is there any preference of what kind of
identifier (DOI, or urn, or ...) to use in the case of a
strictly digital music edition (no hybrid edition, not the
rendering, just the coding)?<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
N.</span><br>
<br>
<div>
<div class="Section1"><b><span style="font-size:

11.0pt;font-family:Times">Dr. Norbert <span
class="SpellE">Dubowy</span> </span></b><br>
<span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Times"><span
id="Text02">Mozart-Institut/Digitale Mozart-Edition</span></span><br>
<span class="SpellE"><span
style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Times">Cheflektor/Managing</span></span><span
style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Times"> Editor </span>
<p><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Times">Internationale
Stiftung <span class="SpellE">Mozarteum</span><br>
Schwarzstr. 26<br>
5020 Salzburg, <span class="SpellE">Austria</span><br>
T +43 (0) 662 889 40 66<br>
F +43 (0) 662 889 40 68<br>
E <a href="mailto:dubowy%40mozarteum.at"
moz-do-not-send="true">dubowy@mozarteum.at</a><br>
<a href="http://www.mozarteum.at/" moz-do-not-send="true">www.mozarteum.at</a>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
--Jim DeLaHunt, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:jdlh@jdlh.com" moz-do-not-send="true">jdlh@jdlh.com</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.jdlh.com/" moz-do-not-send="true">http://blog.jdlh.com/</a> (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://jdlh.com/" moz-do-not-send="true">http://jdlh.com/</a>)
multilingual websites consultant
355-1027 Davie St, Vancouver BC V6E 4L2, Canada
Canada mobile +1-604-376-8953
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