PURLs and Pearls

A Bit About PURLs

Ed Summers | inkdroid | 16th December 2021

Former metadata librarian reminisces about an early building block of online cataloguing: the PURL or "Persistent Uniform Resource Locator". This is a system that allows individual links to change without breaking an entire library catalogue. Created in 1995, this method is "a great example of how exposed pipes are useful when building applications that are meant to be infrastructure" (1,834 words)

The Best Books On Sri Lanka

Sophie Roell | Five Books | 2nd January 2022

Interview with a Sri Lankan political economist, who left the country at the age of 12 and has slowly rediscovered his birthplace as an adult. Each book recommended as part of this conversation is a surprise: a contemporary history, a 17C memoir, a 20C biography, a political novel and "a thinly fictionalised novella". The key thing to understand about Sri Lanka? Its "baffling complexity" (5,380 words)

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