Would it be useful and feasible to have a single identifier to link together all the instances of a learning resource? To be more specific, consider a lecture that has been videoed. The video is available on YouTube, in a national repository, and from the website of the institution where it was delivered (also bear in mind that there might be an audio-only recording and written transcripts of the same lecture). Should there be an HTTP URI that relates (indirectly) to all of these versions of the same lecture?

The reason I’m asking is because we are trying to define what should be the technical and metadata requirements for materials produced through the HEFCE/JISC/HE Academy OER funding. I’m suggesting a short URI that can be used to refer to any version of a work; as I envisage this it would resolve to a list of all the known versions. I think this is important for accessibility (in its widest sense), sustainability, and for collating information about a resource that may be available all over the place. The problems centre on the difficulty of understanding the concepts involved, and are especially acute because the implementation cannot be done just by the people who currently understand the issues involved.
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Tesco know how old my children are. They know this because, through tracking what we buy online or using a loyalty card, they know when we started to buy nappies and baby talc. They have used this information to send us special offer vouchers for baby foods etc. The library at my home institution have similar information about students’ borrowing habits and in principle have access to information about what courses the students were enrolled on and what they access through the VLE. This information was described as a goldmine, but libraries don’t use it. This workshop was about how they might use it, with the related questions of should they and could they.
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