n. (abbr. URN)a string of characters used as a persistent, location-independent resource identifierRFC 1737, 1994, 2A URN identifies a resource or unit of information. It may identify, for example, intellectual content, a particular presentation of intellectual content, or whatever a name assignment authority determines is a distinctly namable entity.RFC 2141, 1997, 1Uniform Resource Names (URNs) are intended to serve as persistent, location-independent, resource identifiers and are designed to make it easy to map other namespaces (which share the properties of URNs) into URN-space. Therefore, the URN syntax provides a means to encode character data in a form that can be sent in existing protocols, transcribed on most keyboards, etc.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, 17URN ¶ A Uniform Resource Name intended to serve as a persistent, location-independent, resource identifier.RFC 8141, 2017, 4A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [RFC3986] that is assigned under the “urn” URI scheme and a particular URN namespace, with the intent that the URN will be a persistent, location-independent resource identifier. A URN namespace is a collection of such URNs, each of which is (1) unique, (2) assigned in a consistent and managed way, and (3) assigned according to a common definition. (Some URN namespaces create names that exist only as URNs, whereas others assign URNs based on names that were already created in non-URN identifier systems, such as ISBNs [RFC3187], ISSNs [RFC3044], or RFCs [RFC2648].)Harvard 2020The Name Resolution Service (NRS) is a Harvard Library service for creating, maintaining, and resolving URNs, also called persistent identifiers or Names. URNs are location-independent names for network-accessible resources.Pitt Libraries 2024A URN is a formal naming scheme that identifies a resource but does not indicate its location or how to access it (e.g., ISBN, ISSN). It is a unique identifier for a resource but cannot be used as a clickable link. Example: isbn:9781642653779.
