OSIS? 2.0.1 User's Manual - Web services are running on AMBIB

If a publication matches all of the above elements within work, it is presumed to be an
acceptable resolution for any reference to that work as decl<strong>are</strong>d.
If no perfect match can be found, applications may, indeed should, attempt to fall back to
the closest available publication. <strong>OSIS</strong> does not define a required method of fallback, or
define what "closest" must mean in all contexts. However, one possible approach is to
successively ignore particular elements in this order:
• Identifier: because identifiers <strong>are</strong> often ambiguous. For example, hardcover and
softcover editions of a book typically have different ISBNs, and occasionally
publishers re-use an old ISBN for a completely different book.
• Date: because a different imprint or edition of the same conceptual work is
typically adequate. Precisely targeted links, however, may not refer to the exact
location desired. Applications may wish to ignore all dates except for the original
publication date.
• Publisher: because several publishers may publish a given work (particularly
older works), publishers may change name, etc.
• Language: Accepting a publication that does not match in language is a
substantial concession. However, some variations of language <strong>are</strong> greater than
others. For example, some modern Bible translations <strong>are</strong> available in separate
American and British English versions, and substituting one for the other is not
unreasonable. This is particularly true because translations generally use
translated titles as well, and so if the language is not closely related, the title will
probably not match either. Applications may wish to encode some knowledge of
language and dialect similarities to implement more sophisticated fallback.
• Creator: because some authors have multiple forms of name: St. Augustine vs.
Augustine of Hippo vs. Augustine. The Bible Technology Group intends to
develop an authority list of normative name-forms for relevant authors, and once
such a list is available, using it will help to avoid such problems. As with other
elements, more sophisticated applications may wish to attempt some kind of
approximate matching in order to achieve better fallback.
• Title: the final item to discard is probably title. If a work's title differs, it is
probably a different work, or at least a translation into a non-close language. On
the other hand, some titles have been used by multiple authors, and so a match on
title alone should be considered suspect.
Arguments can easily be made for a variety of other fallback methods. For example, if
the identifier element matches, the work is probably right, even though an identifier
mismatch is not good evidence that the work is wrong.
7.5. Date formats
All dates in the header and in attributes should be in this standard format, which is based
on IETF RFC 3339. However, it uses period rather than colon as the field separator (for
consistency with other <strong>OSIS</strong>is types), and adds features to allow for dates BCE, for
approximate dates, for date ranges, for yearless dates (as used in many daily devotionals),