n. (abbr. URI)a string of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resourceRFC 1630, 1994, 3URIs ¶ This document defines a way to encapsulate a name in any registered name space, and label it with the the [sic] name space, producing a member of the universal set. Such an encoded and labelled member of this set is known as a Universal Resource Identifier, or URI.NIST 1994, 9Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): A set of related standards for encoding resource location and identification information for electronic and other objects. Examples include Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and Uniform Resource Names (URNs).EAD 1999Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): A string, structured according to the syntax of Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 2396, that identifies a resource on the Internet such as a file, a downloadable document, or an image. There are two classes of URIs: those that identify by specifying location (Uniform Resource Locators) and those that do so by naming the resource (Uniform Resource Names), such as purls (persistent URLs). See also Uniform Resource Locator.MARC 21, 2000, 856, p. 5Uniform Resource Identifier ¶ Subfield ‡ u contains the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which provides electronic access data in a standard syntax. This data can be used for automated access to an electronic item using one of the Internet protocols or by resolution of a URN.W3C/IETF 2001During the early years of discussion of web identifiers (early to mid 90s), people assumed that an identifier type would be cast into one of two (or possibly more) classes. An identifier might specify the location of a resource (a URL) or its name (a URN) independent of location. Thus a URI was either a URL or a URN.EAD 2002, 18HREF ¶ The locator for a remote resource in a simple or extended link. An HREF takes the form of a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).RFC 3986, 2005, 1A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource.Paradigm 2007, 5–6A resource is anything that can be identified by a URI, and does not necessarily have to be in digital format or available via the Internet (e.g., a human being or an abstract concept could be assigned a URI).DCMI 2020Each term is identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), a global identifier usable in Linked Data. Term URIs resolve to the (DCMI Metadata Terms) document when selected in a browser or, when referenced programmatically by RDF applications, to one of four RDF schemas. The scope of each RDF schema corresponds to a “DCMI namespace”, or set of DCMI metadata terms that are identified using a common base URI, as enumerated in the DCMI Namespace Policy. In Linked Data, the URIs for DCMI namespaces are often declared as prefixes in order to make data, queries, and schemas more concise and readable.Pitt Libraries 2024A URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is a formal system for uniquely identifying resources and consists of two types: URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) and URNs (Uniform Resource Name).
Notes
A URI is the broad term that identifies a resource, a URL points to a location, and a URN specifies a name of a resource independent of a location. Both URLs and URNs are URIs, but not the reverse. Examples:URI: mailto:user@info.comURL: https://dictionary.archivists.orgURN: urn:ISSN:0360-9081
