In computing, info is a

Uniform Resource Identifier A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), formerly Universal Resource Identifier, is a unique sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource, such as resources on a webpage, mail address, phone number, books, real-world obje ...

(URI) scheme which enables identifiers from public namespaces to be represented as URIs, when they would otherwise have no canonical URL form, such as

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

identifiers,

Handle System The Handle System is a proprietary registry assigning persistent identifiers, or ''handles'', to information resources, and for resolving "those handles into the information necessary to locate, access, and otherwise make use of the resources". ...

handles, and

Digital object identifier A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System; th ...

Specification

The specification for the info scheme is provided by the Informational RFC 4452.

Example

The following is an example of an info URI: In this example, "ddc" designates the

Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) (pronounced ) colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. ...

namespace and "22/eng//004.678" is the identifier within that namespace.

Namespace registry

Between 2003 and 2010, info namespaces were registered by the

Online Computer Library Center OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...

(OCLC) Office of Research on behalf of the

National Information Standards Organization The National Information Standards Organization (NISO; ) is a United States non-profit standards organization that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing, bibliographic and library applications. It was found ...

(NISO), an American library standards body. About 30 namespaces were registered. In 2010, the registry was closed, in view of the increasing importance of the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

Linked Data In computing, linked data is structured data which is interlinked with other data so it becomes more useful through semantic queries. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF and URIs, but rather than using them to serve web ...

paradigm, and adopters of the info scheme were advised to migrate resource identity requirements towards "mainstream Web practices."

References

{{URI scheme URI schemes Identifiers