URN-NBN -- Long Term Identification of Electronic Documents

Péter Ittzés, Bálint Aradi, Ádám Horváth

National Széchényi Library

The Universal Resource Name (URN) is an identifier for Internet resources in the long term. It has been created to solve the problems inherent in the Universal Resource Locator (URL) which is extremely difficult to modify as all changes have to be entered everywhere with the references. It is even more difficult to communicate the modification of the content to those having referred to the URL in question. The URN (together with URL) is used to solve this problem. Its structure, the relevant standards, together with some examples as well as the opportunities of application in Hungary are discussed.