Guidelines and a Framework for Urn Resolution Systems

This document addresses the issues of the discovery of URN resolver services that in turn will directly translate URNs into URLs and URCs. The document falls into three major parts, the assumptions underlying the work, the guidelines in order to be a viable Resolver Discovery Service or RDS to help in finding URN resolvers, and a framework for designing RDSs. The guidelines fall into three major areas: evolvability, usability, and security and privacy. An RDS that is compliant with the framework will not necessarily be compliant with the guidelines. Compliance with the guidelines will need to be validated separately.